Fleet-level selective maintenance problem under a phased mission scheme with short breaks: A heuristic sequential game approach

Abstract Selective maintenance is the most widely used strategy for identifying and performing the maintenance actions necessary for fleet mission success. A fleet of equipment is usually required to perform phased missions with short scheduled breaks. In this case, a selective maintenance model should be extended for frequency-based maintenance optimization. We research the problem considering the application of condition-based maintenance (CBM). The problem is formulated with the objective of reducing the repair frequency and cost. The constraint is the reliability of the phased mission, and the variables are the remaining useful lifetimes (RUL) of all the key subsystems. The equipment can be classified into three echelons based on the health status before each wave of a mission, and a heuristic game framework with state backtracking is proposed for the three echelons to solve the problem. The flowchart and heuristic rules of the game framework are given, and the game algorithms for the second and third echelons are presented. The second echelon algorithm aims to select the dispatched equipment for the current wave and minimize maintenance, and the third echelon algorithm aims to ensure that sufficient equipment is available for the next wave by performing necessary maintenance. Finally, we present two types of strategy adjustment methods with state backtracking to turn infeasible solutions into feasible solutions and to optimize feasible solutions. To verify the capacity of the proposed method, a case involving a fleet of 12 aircraft is analyzed for a three-mission scheme, and the aircraft repair times and costs are reduced by the method.