Maintenance optimization for a system with a gamma deterioration process and intervention delay: Application to track maintenance

This paper presents a maintenance strategy model of a system with a gamma deterioration process, regular inspection times, and intervention delay. Interventions are deemed necessary when the deterioration process is greater than an intervention level at inspection time. The objective is to determine the long-term mean costs of different maintenance strategies and to optimize these costs with respect to specific parameters, such as the intervention level or the inspection interval. Semi-regeneration properties at the inspection times and associated Markov renewal techniques are used in order to compute the long-term mean costs. This model is applied to the maintenance of railway tracks.