Risk Prioritization for Failure Modes in Mining Railcars

Railway transportation systems are generally used to transport minerals from large-scale mines. Any failure in the railcar components may cause delays or even catastrophic derailment accidents. Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is an effective tool for the risk assessment of mechanical systems. This method is an appropriate approach to identify the critical failure modes and provide proper control measures to reduce the level of risk. This research aims to propose an approach to identify and prioritize the failure modes based on their importance degree. To achieve this, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used along with the FMEA. To compensate for the scarcities of the conventional FMEA in using the linguistic variables, the proposed approach is developed under the fuzzy environment. The proposed approach was applied in a case study, a rolling stock operated in an iron ore mine located in Sweden. The results of this study are helpful to identify not only the most important failure modes but also the most serious and critical ones.