Condition‐based maintenance for a system subject to a non‐homogeneous wear process with a wear rate transition

The aim of this paper is to propose an adaptive maintenance model for a gradually deteriorating system. The system considered initially deteriorates with a nominal deterioration rate and at an unknown time the system's deterioration rate changes and the new deterioration rate is a time‐dependent function. To deal with the transition of mode of deterioration in the framework of the maintenance decision rule an adequate online change detection algorithm is used. The maintenance decision rule is chosen in order to minimise the total maintenance cost including the cost of unavailability. The main result of this paper is to point out the interest of using a detection algorithm and hence the appreciation of a decision rule which takes into account transitions in the deterioration rate.