Imperfect Maintenance Model for Optimizing Air Compressor Availability

The demand for compressed air systems to power pneumatic tools has steadily increased across various industries, such as chemicals, construction, mining, and oil and gas. However, due to the high complexity of air compressor technology and the need for higher availability, standard maintenance activities are insufficient. As a result, compressed air systems require a proper high-level maintenance strategy and effective monitoring. This article addresses the imperfect preventive maintenance (PM) optimization problem by implementing preventive replacements and minimal repairs to maximize the average availability of the air compressor subject to continuous degradation while satisfying minimal maintenance cost rate requirements. Each maintenance action is associated with a cost and duration, and the imperfect PM and corrective maintenance results are modeled on the maintenance cost rate and availability. The proposed imperfect PM optimization model aims to determine the optimal number of imperfect repairs and the replacement time. A mathematical model is introduced as nonlinear programming, and an algorithm is proposed to solve the optimization problem. Overall, this article provides a comprehensive and formal analysis of the maintenance strategy for air compressors, offering valuable insights into the optimization of imperfect preventive maintenance.