DISCONTINUITIES IN HOMOGENEOUS MARKOV-PROCESSES AND THEIR USE IN MODELING TECHNICAL SYSTEMS UNDER INSPECTION

This paper provides a modelling framework for the use of Markovian tec hniques for components and systems exhibiting discontinuities for exam ple due to inspection and scheduled maintenance. This approach can be used as a systematic way to build and categorize complex models for co mponents as long as the Markovian assumption holds. The relevant model s have been included as examples. In addition, the framework can be ap plied to systems composed of several components with dependencies amon g each other, which may cause large conservativities, if Boolean model ling technique is applied. As an example, a failure combination of thr ee events is discussed, one of which is a scheduled maintenance event, which may be postponed, if one of the redundancies is known to be fai led. Two strategies of treating scheduled maintenance are compared wit h the boolean approach assuming independent basic events. The results for the unavailability differ by orders of magnitude, though the Boole an approach is conservative.