Reliability Analysis of a Dragline for Productivity Improvement – A Case Study

Abstract

Productivity of dragline is affected by its availability, reliability, and maintainability. The failure of components of dragline leads to the failure of dragline system. Effective maintenance planning can prevent these unwanted failures in the capital-intensive draglines and can improve its productivity. This paper discusses the possible causes for failure of various components of dragline and possible ways for improvement of performance of dragline so as to reduce its downtime. In addition, the failure data of a dragline deployed in an opencast coal mine in northern India was collected for reliability analysis. The failure of dragline was subjected to two major failure types: failure because of electrical components and failure because of mechanical components. The modelling and analysis of failure and repair data was done by best-fit distribution using MATLAB software. The increased availability due to maintenance can improve productivity of dragline by reducing the unexpected breakdown failure.