Title: Reliability analysis of the main conveyor system in underground coal mine to determine the maintenance schedules

Authors: A.K. Gorai; Pritam Kumar; Ashok Kumar Patel

Addresses: Department of Mining Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha – 769008, India ' Department of Mining Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha – 769008, India ' Department of Mining Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha – 769008, India

Abstract: The study aims to analyse the reliability of the main conveyor system in an underground coal mine [Churcha (RO)] in India for estimating the suitable maintenance time. The main conveyor system in the mine has seven subsystems. The present study examined the six common probability distribution functions for fitting the time between failure (TBF) and time to repair (TTR) data. The TBF data in all the cases best fitted with Weibull 3-parameter distribution function except one. But, the TTR data in most of the cases best fitted with Lognormal 3-parameter distribution function. It was found that the subsystems C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6 and C7 require maintenance in the interval of 52.39, 65.28, 60.00, 84.66, 98.77, 20.89 and 112.85 h, respectively, to improve the reliability of the system to 80%.

Keywords: reliability; maintenance schedule; repairable system; conveyor system; Churcha (RO) coal mine.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMME.2017.085838

International Journal of Mining and Mineral Engineering, 2017 Vol.8 No.3, pp.207 - 233

Received: 28 Aug 2016
Accepted: 02 Apr 2017

Published online: 15 Aug 2017 *

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