Controlling mission hazards through integrated abort and spare support optimization

Area of Science:

• Reliability Engineering
• Operations Research
• System Safety

Background:

• Safety-critical systems face degradation risks impacting mission success.
• Component failure in these systems can lead to catastrophic safety losses.
• Limited spare parts and mission aborts complicate risk management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop adaptive strategies for component replacement and mission termination.
• To optimize the balance between mission completion and system survivability.
• To address risk management challenges in safety-critical systems with resource limitations.

Main Methods:

• Modeling component degradation using a continuous-time discrete-state Markov chain.
• Formulating the joint decision problem as a finite-time Markov decision process.
• Analyzing structural properties and establishing control-limit policies for replacements and mission termination.

Main Results:

• Developed structured control-limit policies for adaptive spare replacement and mission termination.
• Validated superior model performance in enhancing operational efficiency and mitigating risks.
• Demonstrated effectiveness through numerical experiments on a radar system driver.

Conclusions:

• The proposed adaptive policies effectively manage risks in safety-critical systems.
• Optimized decision-making enhances system survivability and mission success rates.
• The approach provides a robust framework for resource-limited operational environments.