Page 28 - Australian Defence Magazine Sep 2021

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ICondition-Based Maintenance – the Logical Step for Defence
nterval-based maintenance is familiar to us all. When we purchase a new car, it comes with a warranty that is linked to a scheduled maintenance program. This involves the car being serviced based
on time or kilometres travelled. These services involve replacing the oil and filters, regardless of their condition, which is an unnecessary cost and waste. Further, any condition-based data that may be derived from the replaced parts or lubricants, is lost in the process.
Condition-based maintenance (CBM) involves the
regular and frequent monitoring of the equipment
status and performance with a combination of sensors,
inspections, samples, and scheduled task routines. The
data derived from these processes indicates when an
equipment nears or falls outside set parameters for
normal operation. This data then informs the appropriate
maintenance action to be performed to return the equipment back to a normal operating condition before it fails. These leading indicators allow for maintenance to be planned and scheduled.
The P-F Curve (Figure 1) is illustrative of this situation. CBM monitoring methods identify deviations from normal condition in the area of the curve where performance degradation and wear or damage is minimal. CBM also significantly reduces safety risks and the chances of personnel injury or fatality.
FIGURE 1 - P-F CURVE
The benefits of CBM over interval-based maintenance include:
• improving the operational availability of equipment by reducing maintenance times, including reducing the administrative and
logistics downtime (ALDT),
• extending individual component life through maintenance and
returning it to a normal operating condition before abnormal wear
or failure occurs,
• reducing the cost of maintenance by extending the interval between
servicing and reducing waste, and
• increasing safety through early identification of faults and
minimising catastrophic failure.
CBM has been around since the late 1940s, used to monitor
coolant and fuel leaks in locomotive diesel engines. Since then, its
use has expanded into other sectors, most significantly in the mining industry. Defence has implemented limited CBM practices through oil condition analysis and vibration analysis, most notably in aircraft but also in some vehicle fleets.
The introduction of on-board Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) in modern equipment provides the operator immediate equipment condition feedback. This alerts the operator to take scalable action to report, repair or cease using the equipment, but it does not provide enough data to support completely effective CBM practices.
Ron Parrello, Managing Director – Dingo Defence says “One of
the greatest misconceptions about CBM is that it requires expensive sensors to be fitted to an equipment. This is not correct. Some of the
best data can come from the simplest inspection methods undertaken by maintainers and operators.” Paul Higgins, CEO and owner of Dingo says “An example of a simple but effective tool is a magnetic plug that are commonly fitted to final drives. These plugs are simply unscrewed and inspected to see what ferrous metals have accumulated on them. These metal shavings can indicate problems within the gearbox or in other parts linked to it.” Analysing the right data is the key to successful CBM.
Dingo has been providing CBM, targeting point of failure detection, in the mining, defence, rail, and wind-power industrial sectors for over 25 years. Dingo’s Trakka, is a powerful, cloud-based Predictive Maintenance software system designed to store and analyse equipment data. Trakka, combined with Dingo’s equipment experts and 25 years of OEM agnostic data on equipment components, has assisted Dingo’s customers effectively implement CBM practices at significant cost benefit. Trakka visualisation products, like its customer focused dashboards, are relevant for all levels of maintenance and accountability from fleet view, to workshop and
the maintainer. Trakka is fully configurable and integrates with any ERP system. Figure 2 are some examples of Trakka’s Asset Health web dashboard displaying fleet level views of component condition.
The mining industry has long proven the cost benefit and increased capability availability of adopting CBM practices. With Defence now in the throes of an equipment revolution, Defence may also realise the benefits of CBM through its adoption, combined with smarter data collection and analytics.
FIGURE 2 - TRAKKA DASHBOARD
RON PARRELLO, Managing Director - Defence E: rparrello@dingo.com
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