Tribology and Maintenance of Machinery – A Review

The present paper considers the tribological principles on the maintenance of machinery whose three important areas are – Preventive, Condition Based and Proactive. Although breakdown is kept out of view, the morphology and analysis of failure provide important inputs for maintenance strategies. Condition based maintenance depends on three D’s – Detection, Diagnosis and Decision. In many machinery systems, the problem of predicting the remaining useful life – the Proactive part of the program, and evaluating the cost benefits are of enormous importance. Here the authors endeavor to highlight how the tribologist can significantly improve the maintenance practice.