Evaluating maintenance policies by quantitative modeling and analysis

The growing importance of maintenance in the evolving industrial scenario and the technological advancements of the recent years have yielded the development of modern maintenance strategies such as the condition-based maintenance (CBM) and the predictive maintenance (PrM). In practice, assessing whether these strategies really improve the maintenance performance becomes a fundamental issue. In the present work, this is addressed with reference to an example concerning the stochastic crack growth of a generic mechanical component subject to fatigue degradation. It is shown that modeling and analysis provide information useful for setting a maintenance policy. & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.