Remaining useful life estimation in the presence of given shocks

In a system, prediction of remaining useful lifetime (RUL) of servicing before reaching to a specified breakdown threshold is a very important practical issue, and research in this field is still regarded as an appreciated research gap. Operational environment of an equipment is not constant and changes regarding to stresses and shocks. These random environmental factors accelerate system deterioration by affecting on the level or rate of degradation path. The present study focuses on providing a practical operational guideline to estimate the RUL of a system with general degradation path after receiving a shock which only affects on the degradation level. Due to exact estimation of the shock arrival times and measuring the magnitudes of future shocks to investigate shock effects on RUL is almost impossible in the real world and laborious in practice, in this research a new procedure based on total defect size monitored in the constant inspection periods and Accelerated Factor (AF) is proposed to analyze RUL of the system. A Micro-Electro-Mechanical system (MEMS) is used as an example and the results show the applicability of the proposed approach.