Optimal Combination of Aircraft Maintenance Tasks by a Novel Simplex Optimization Method

Combining maintenance tasks into work packages is not only necessary for arranging maintenance activities, but also critical for the reduction of maintenance cost. In order to optimize the combination of maintenance tasks by fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm, an improved fuzzy C-means clustering model is introduced in this paper. In order to reduce the dimension, variables representing clustering centers are eliminated in the improved cluster model. So the improved clustering model can be directly solved by the optimization method. To optimize the clustering model, a novel nonlinear simplex optimization method is also proposed in this paper. The novel method searches along all rays emitting from the center to each vertex, and those search directions are rightly positive basis. The algorithm has both theoretical convergence and good experimental effect. Taking the optimal combination of some maintenance tasks of a certain aircraft as an instance, the novel simplex optimization method and the clustering model both exhibit excellent performance.