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CONTENTS
1
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 3
Standardization ................................................................................................................... 5
3.2
Interchangeability ................................................................................................................ 5
3.3
Accessibility ........................................................................................................................ 6
3.4
Safety .................................................................................................................................. 6
CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................... 11
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 12
Page 2
INTRODUCTION
Maintainability measure the simplicity and speed with which a system or equipment can be reinstated to
operational status following a failure. It is characteristic of equipment design and installation, personnel
availability in the required skill levels, adequacy of maintenance procedures and test equipment, and the
physical environment under which maintenance is performed. One expression of maintainability is the
probability that an item will be maintained in or restored to a specified condition within a given period of
time, when the maintenance is done in accordance with recommended procedures and resources.
In general mining equipment must be designed to operate in harsh and challenging environments. This is
due mainly to the presence of dust, water and other elements of the mining operation. In the Caribbean
mining is done using the open pit method for the extraction of alumina in Jamaica, construction aggregate
in Trinidad, and limestone in Barbados.
Also in the Caribbean maintenance of mining plant and equipment is not done in a structured manner and
as a result most companies operate on the Breakdown/Corrective Maintenance philosophy. It is envisage
that this practice be replaced with a more holistic maintenance approach, so as to reduce maintenance
cost which will inevitably contribute to greater efficiencies and profit margins.
Page 3
MAINTAINABILITY JUSTIFICATION
The primary aims of maintainability engineering applied plant and equipment are to increase efficiency
and safety and at the safe time reduce overall maintenance cost. Therefore as a direct result this aspect
starts with improving the mining equipment in the design stages. However, it should be noted that the
introduction of maintainability engineering will in no way exclude the need for maintenance, repair and
servicing of mining equipment, it will certainly provide the following advantages:
Page 4
DESIGN CHARACTERISTICS
It is imperative that during the design phase careful consideration should be placed on the maintainability
aspects of the equipment being design. These characteristics comprise features which exhibits a major
role in decreasing the equipment unavailability and downtime. These features are categorized as follows:
3.1
Standardization
This design feature primarily involves the restriction to a minimum of the collection of parts and
components that can be used to meet the equipment requirements. Some of the primary goals
of standardization are as follows:
o
3.2
Interchangeability
This design factor implies that any given item can be replaced by similar item, and
The replacement can perform the specified function of the replaced item in an effective manner.
Interchangeability can be sub-divided into two (20 groups, which are as follows:
Page 5
Functional
Physical
3.3
Two items serve the same function (e.g. alternators and engine starters)
Any two (2) items can be installed, coupled, and used in the effectively in the
same locations and in the same manner. (e.g. pneumatic jack hammers,
hose/electrical connectors)
Accessibility
This design aspect enables the relative ease with which an item can be reached for repair,
replacement or service. In most instances the lack of accessibility is an important maintainability
problem and often results in poor maintenance. Some of the important factors that affect
maintainability are as follows:
3.4
The nature/extent of the maintenance tasks to be conducted via the access opening
All components that require repair, replacement, or adjustment every 2,000 h or less
should be directly accessible from the sides or ends of the machine.
Maintenance and service points should be located no further than 91 cm (36 in) from the
maintainer's head at time of inspection.
Safety
On an almost continual basis maintenance personnel will be required to perform various tasks
which may be located in hazardous conditions. These conditions may be the result of
insufficient considerations given to safety aspects during the design phase. However, there are
instances where some of the human safety guidelines are to install fail-safe devices, fit all
access opening and the study of the potential sources of injury by electric shock, amongst
others.
Some common safety designs incorporated in the manufacture of mining equipment are as
follows:
o
Page 6
Panic buttons
Mechanical lockout devices are to be located in areas where maintenance personnel are
to access (e.g., under a cutter head).
Hot exhaust pipes should be routed away from areas frequently accessed for conducting
maintenance/inspection activities.
Page 7
MAINTAINABILITY METRICS
In the design of new plant and equipment, maintainability studies are rarely conducted.
However, with the increasing competitive business environment customers are requesting
maintainability data so as better calculate the life cycle cost of the equipment. It is therefore
important to have available data of various maintainability parameters and/or measures to be
incorporated during the design phase. These measures include the following:
o
Where
m - Quantity of units
i - constant failure rate of unit I; for i=1,2,3,m
Ti - The corrective maintenance or repair time to repair unit i, for i=1,2,3,m
o
Page 8
Maintainability Function
This function is used for calculating the probability of achieving a repair task in a given
time interval and it is defined as follows:
where
- mean of repair times,
- standard deviation of the variable repair time t around the mean .
Substituting the Normal Distribution equation into the Maintainability Function, the following
equation is derived:
where
n - number of repair times,
ti - repair time i, for i = 1,2,3, . . .,n.
The standard deviation is expressed by:
Where,
Page 9
- Constant repair rate (i.e., the reciprocal of the mean time to repair, MTTR),
t - Variable repair time.
Substituting the above equation into the Maintainability Function the following equation is derived:
Since
Page 10
CONCLUSIONS
o
It was quite evident that after conducting research, there was a general trend which
suggest that maintainability is currently done mostly using design checklist, and not on a
structured systematic approach.
Page 11
REFERENCES
Gurgenci, H & Guan, Z: Mobile Plant Maintenance and the Dutymeter Concept;
Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol.7 No. 4, 2001
pp. 275-286
Ghodrati, B; Akersten, P; Kumar, Uday: Spare Part Estimation and Risk Assessment Conducted at
Choghart Iron Ore Mine
Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 13,
No. 4, 2007, pp. 353-363
Page 12