RELIABILITY ANALYSIS OF SHOVEL MACHINES USED IN AN OPEN CAST COAL MINE

Abstract

Performance of a mining machine depends on reliability of the equipment used and other factors. Now the machine reliability is not only considered to be a major performance barometer but also an integral part of an engineering design. So machine reliability study is necessary for equipment design and modification. In this paper, shovel machine has been divided into six subsystems. Trend test and serial correlation test have been done for three shovel and their subsystems from failure data. The parameters of three idealised probability distributions, namely exponential, lognormal, Weibull distribution have been estimated. An investigation has also been made to determine which of these distributions do best fit for characterising failure pattern of shovels and their subsystems. Reliability of a shovel and its subsystems have been estimated at different mission time with taking their best fit distribution. Non-independently and identically distributed (non-iid) data set have been treated by power law process. Some aspects of failure behaviour of machine are analysed briefly for ongoing machine improvement.