Reliability and inspection policies study of repairable system with N kinds of repairmen

This paper considers the reliability and inspection policies of a repairable system. The system has four models-normal, abnormal, hidden fault and failure. Normal, abnormal, hidden fault are working models. When the system is operating, it is inspected once every random period to know which working model is the system in. The diagnostic result for normal and abnormal may be wrong. When system is in hidden fault, diagnostic result is correct. After the system fails, it can be repaired by one of N kinds of repairmen according to the fault's situation. When the result of inspection is that the system is in normal or abnormal models it will accept preventive maintenance. Under the assumption that failure time is arbitrary continuous distribution and inspection interval time is exponential distribution, the reliability indices and the optimal inspection cycle of the system are obtained by using probability analysis and vector Markov process method. Researches on the result of numeral example indicate the feasibility of the proposed method.