Replacement and minimal repair policies for a cumulative damage model with maintenance

This paper considers replacement and minimal repair polices for an extended cumulative damage model with maintenance at each shock: shocks occur at a nonhomogeneous Poisson process. A system undergoes maintenance at each shock when the total damage does not exceed a failure level <F>K</F>, undergoes minimal repair at each shock when the total damage exceeds a failure level <F>K</F>, and is replaced at time <F>T&ast;</F> or at failure <F>N&ast;</F> whichever occurs first. The expected cost rate is obtained and the optimal <F>T&ast;</F> and <F>N&ast;</F> minimizing the expected cost are analytically discussed. It is shown that this model would be applied to the backup of secondary storage files in a database system as an example. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]