Maintenance models for systems subject to measurable deterioration

Book excerpt: Complex engineering systems such as bridges, roads, flood defence structures, and power pylons play an important role in our society. Unfortunately such systems are subject to deterioration, meaning that in course of time their condition falls from higher to lower, and possibly even to unacceptable, levels. Maintenance actions such as inspection, local repair and replacement should be done to retain such systems in or restore them to acceptable operating conditions. After all, the economic consequences of malfunctioning infrastructure systems can be huge. In the life-cycle management of engineering systems, the decisions regarding the timing and the type of maintenance depend on the temporal uncertainty associated with the deterioration. Hence it is of importance to model this uncertainty. In the literature, deterioration models based on Brownian motion and gamma process have had much attention, but a thorough comparison of these models lacks. In this thesis both models are compared on several aspects, both in a theoretical as well as in an empirical setting. Moreover, they are compared with physical process models, which can capture structural insights into the underlying process. For the latter a new framework is developed to draw inference. Next, models for imperfect maintenance are investigated. Finally, a review is given for systems consisting of multiple components.