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The purpose of this article is to compare maintenance policies based on Weibull and q-Weibull models.

This paper uses analytical developments, several figures and tables for graphical and numerical comparison. Previously published hydropower equipment data are used as examples.

Models for optimal maintenance interval determination based on q-Weibull distribution were defined. Closed-form expressions were found, and this allows the application of the method with small computational effort.

The use of the q-Weibull model to guide the definition of maintenance strategy allows decision-making to be more consistent with sample data. The flexibility of the q-Weibull model is able to produce failure rate modeling with five different formats: decreasing, constant, increasing, unimodal and U-shaped. In this way, the maintenance strategies resulting from this model should be more assertive.

Expressions for determining the optimal interval of preventive maintenance were deduced from q-Weibull distribution. Expected costs per maintenance cycle of Brazilian hydropower equipment were calculated with q-Weibull and Weibull distributions. These results were compared in terms of absolute values and trends. Although a large number of works on corrective and preventive maintenance have been proposed, no applications of the q-Weibull distribution were found in literature.