Aperiodic Preventive Maintenance Model and Parameter Estimation

This paper considers an aperiodic preventive maintenance (PM) model for repairable systems, in which the time intervals between two consecutive preventive maintenances are unequal. To propose such an aperiodic PM model, we assume that each PM reduces the current hazard rate by a certain amount which depends on the number of PMs performed previously. If the system fails between PMs, the minimal repair is performed and the hazard rate remains unchanged after the repair. We give the exact expressions for the hazard rate function for the aperiodic PM model. Based on the proposed aperiodic PM model, we suggest the maximum likelihood method to estimate the parameters characterizing the model and apply the method to the case of Weibull distribution. Numerical examples for estimating the parameters are presented for the purpose of illustration.