Fault Analysis and Preventive Maintenance of Rocket Vertical Assembly and Test Plant System

Complex industrial systems often consist of many components whose degradation and failure affect the condition and performance of the entire system. To improve system reliability and minimize total system costs, preventive maintenance (PM) of other components is required while the system’s failed components are being repaired. In this paper, a maintenance cost index is proposed for the Rocket Vertical Assembly and Test Plant (RVATP) system considering various types of costs that affect the total expected cost of the system. Based on this index, a maintenance strategy analysis is performed for the RVATP. The sequence of preventive maintenance of components under two maintenance strategies is studied, and the number of preventive maintenance components under cost constraint is discussed. Finally, the RVATP is analyzed as an example. The results show that the maintenance cost index is not only related to the location of components in the system and associated costs, but also to the importance of preventive maintenance components. Simulation results also show the applicability of the maintenance cost index.