Reliability analysis of underground rock bolters using the renewal process, the non-homogeneous Poisson process and the Bayesian approach

Abstract

Purpose Reliability plays an important role in the execution of the maintenance improvement and the understanding of its concepts is essential to predict the type of maintenance according to the equipment state. Thereby, a computational tool was developed and programming with VBA in Excel® for reliability and failure analysis in a mining context. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The developed approach use the modeling of stochastic processes, such as the renewal process, the non-homogeneous Poisson process and less conventional method as the Bayesian approach, by considering Jeffreys non-informative prior. The resolution gives the best associated model, the parameters estimation, the mean time between failure and the reliability estimate. This approach is validated with the reliability analysis of inter-failure times from underground rock bolters subsystems, over a two-year period. Findings Results show that Weibull and lognormal probability distribution fit to the most subsystems inter-failure times. The study revealed that the bolting head, the rock drill, the screen handler, the electric/electronic system, the hydraulic system, the drilling feeder and the structural consume the most repair frequency. The hydraulic and electric/electronic subsystems represent the lowest reliability after 50 operation hours. Originality/value For the first time, this case study defines practical failures and reliability information for rock bolter subsystems based on real operation data. This paper is useful to the comparative evaluation of rock bolter by detecting the weakest elements and understanding failure patterns in the individual observation subsystems on the overall machine performance.