Optimal mission abort policy for a system subject to dependent deterioration and shock failures

• Published in: Reliability engineering & system safety Vol. 265; p. 111517
• Main Authors: Zhang, Yanzhe, Qi, Faqun, Ding, Hongdan, Zhou, Hongming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2026
• Subjects: Abort policy; Degradation process; Mission success; Random shock; Survivability; Mission success; Degradation process; Abort policy; Survivability; Random shock
• ISSN: 0951-8320
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2025.111517

•A system experiencing internal degradation and external random shock is investigated.•A mission abort is initiated when the cumulative number of shocks or the degradation level reaches a predetermined threshold.•When system’s degradation level reaches a warning threshold, the mission abort condition owing to shocks decreases.•The maintenance cost and economic loss are used to determine the optimal abort actions.•The optimal mission abort policy is derived by minimizing the long-run average cost of the system. This paper presents a joint optimization policy for maintenance and mission abort in a system that experiences internal degradation and external random shock processes. The internal degradation follows a Gamma process, while the random shocks adhere to a Poisson process. A mission abort is initiated when the cumulative number of shocks exceeds a specific threshold or when the degradation level reaches a predetermined threshold. When the degradation level of the system reaches a warning threshold, the mission abort condition owing to shocks decreases. By linking the mission success probability (MSP) and system survivability (SS), the maintenance cost and economic loss are analyzed and applied to determine the optimal abort actions. The optimal mission abort policy is derived by minimizing the long-run average cost of the system. An unmanned aerial vehicle inertial navigation system (UAVS) is applied as a case to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Then, comparative experiments are conducted between the presented strategy and previous abort strategies.