【Title】Reliability Analysis and Maintenance Policy for Complex Systems

【Speaker】Bin Liu,City University of Hong Kong

【Host】Dr. Kaibo Wang

【Time】March 02, 2017, Thursday 13:30-14:30

【Location】Room N412, Shunde Building

【Abstract】With the advances in emerging technologies, systems are becoming increasingly complex, which brings enormous challenges for reliability engineering. On the other hand, due to the lack of information for complex systems, how to appropriately implement maintenance policies remains an open issue. In this talk, we report our recent progress in reliability analysis and maintenance policy for complex systems. In particular, we investigate the maintenance strategies for different types of complex systems: multi-component systems, systems with multi-dimensional degradation processes and load-sharing systems. (I) we develop a maintenance policy for  multi-component systems with hidden failures. Optimal individual inspection intervals are achieved by minimizing the maintenance cost. Due to the dependence among components, an exact optimal solution is difficult to obtain. A heuristic method named “base interval approach” is employed to reduce the computational complexity. (II) We propose maintenance policy for systems with multi-dimensional degradation processes. We consider a realistic factor of imperfect inspection, where a failure is detected with certain probability. The results imply that accuracy of the inspection techniques contributes significantly to the operating cost and it is suggested that more effort should be paid to improve the inspection accuracy (III) We presents certain new approaches to reliability modeling of systems subject to shared loads. Reliability assessment of such systems is often complicated by the fact that both the arriving load and the failure of components influence the degradation of the surviving components in a complex manner. The proposed approaches seek to ease this problem by first deriving the time to prior failures and the arrival of random loads and then determining the number of failed components.

【Brief bio】Bin Liu received his B.S. degree in Automation from Zhejiang University, China. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in the Department of Systems Engineering & Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include reliability and maintenance modeling, importance measures with application to complex systems, and data analysis. His papers have appeared in European Journal of Operational Research, IIE Transactions, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, Computers & Industrial Engineering, among others.

All interested are welcome!