Phased-mission systems are widely utilized in aerospace, defense fields, and production processes. These systems are characterized by missions consisting of multiple consecutive phases, each with distinct objectives and operating conditions. Due to complex operational environments and internal degradation, such systems face high failure risks, potentially re- sulting in irreversible economic losses and safety hazards. Therefore, designing a rational mission abort policy during mission execution to balance mission reliability and system survivability is of significant practical importance. This paper addresses the specific charac- teristics of phased-mission systems and proposes a mission abort policy based on the degra- dation process. A multi-phase Wiener process with phase-specific parameters is employed to depict system degradation behavior in different phases. A dynamic decision-making frame- work is developed to determine whether to continue or abort the mission by minimizing the expected total cost. A dynamic programing algorithm is used to find the optimal mission abort policy. The structural properties of the optimal policy are examined. The mission success probability is derived recursively using a matrix method. The practical value of the proposed model is validated through numerical analysis and comparative studies.
Zheng et al. (Sun,) studied this question.