A Multistate Model of Reliability of Farming Machinery

¹ Institute of Biosystems Engineering, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poland
² Department of Organisation and Production Engineering, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Poland

^* Corresponding author: karol.durczak@up.poznan.pl

Abstract

The article describes a multistate model of reliability of farming machinery as a deductive stochastic model of the process of changes in the technical conditions observed during operation. These conditions determine the capacity of machinery to fulfil functions, simultaneously keeping safety and maintaining acceptable costs of possible repairs. The theory of semi-Markov processes was used to solve the problem. After detailed analysis of the symptoms of damage to exemplary groups of farming machinery (rotary mowers, rotary harrows and harvesting presses) we obligatorily and arbitrarily proposed an optimal four-state reliability model to describe changes in technical conditions. In contrast to the classic reliability theory, which allows only two states of technical usability (either a machine is fit to function or not), we also allowed intermediate states, because not all types of damage affect the functionality of machinery. This approach increases the probability of technical usability of machinery and rationally delays the moment of premature repair.