This paper describes a statistical method for calculating the Cost of Corrosion and Fleet Readiness. The approach is called the Finite State Machine or FSM method. It is based on Markov Chaining for temporal data applied to field inspections of vehicles. Cost and repair time/downtime for specific vehicles are extracted from the maintenance databases maintained by the Army for tracking part and labor cost. The cost/time data are integrated into the calculated change in corrosion states to determine the cost of corrosion and Fleet Readiness.
KEY WORDS Corrosion, Cost Analysis, Readiness, Field Data Collection, Markov Chaining, Finite State Machine