A methodology for preventive maintenance analysis under transient response

As an effective strategy to reduce the number of system failures and to lower the overall maintenance cost, preventive maintenance has been studied intensively. However, almost all the past research focused on the analysis of the steady state system behavior. The inherent transient failure characteristics of a system have been overlooked. Based on our previous and ongoing research, a methodology for preventive maintenance analysis under transient response is presented in this paper. The approach consists of two major components: analytical models based on renewal theory that incorporate maintenance costs in formulating maintenance decision problem and numerical methods for solving the resulting differential and integral equations. Finally, simulation serves as the verification tool.