Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Analysis of the Main Conveyor System in Underground Coal Mine: A Case Study of Churcha (RO) Mine

Estimation of reliability, maintainability and availability assumes an important role in performance evolution of mining system or equipment. Reliability forecasts are necessary for every type of the machinery, similar to maintenance planning, production planning, reliability assessment, fault detection in the production system of mine, and risk evaluation. The mining system’s reliability, maintainability and availability have assumed great significance in present years due to a competitive environment and overall operating condition and production purpose. The performance of the system depends on reliability and availability of the machinery used, working environment, maintenance, operation process and specialized skill of operators, etc. The aim of the proposed study is to analyze operating reliability, maintainability and availability of the main conveyor system in an underground coal mine. The study uses the failure and repair data of the main conveyor system of Churcha (RO) coal mine in India. The main conveyor system in the mine has seven subsystems. This analysis has developed a method to identify the critical and sensitive subsystems or components of the main Conveyor system that need more attention for improvement. In this research work, we suggest the way to improve the reliability and availability of a repairable system. In the way, the concept of importance measures must be used to prioritize the components or subsystems for availability improvement processes. Availability significance measures the criticality of each component based on different points of view such as availability, failure rate, and repair rate of each subsystem. The reliability and availability of repairable systems can be enhanced by applying proper maintenance strategies. For each subsystem, best fit models were selected for reliability and maintainability analyses. The empirical data of the conveyor system at Churcha (RO) mine of SECL are used as a case study for reliability, availability and maintainability strategies analysis.The study shows that the reliability and maintainability analysis is greatly helpful for deciding maintenance intervals, planning and organizing maintenance of main conveyor system in the mine. The outcomes demonstrate that availability and reliability significance measures can be utilized as a rule for organizing the efforts for reliability and availability improvement of a system.