Title: Maintenance class-based cost-effective preventive maintenance scheduling of coal-fired power plants

Authors: Debasis Das Adhikary; Goutam Kumar Bose; Dipankar Bose; Souren Mitra

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Haldia Institute of Technology, ICARE Complex, HIT Campus, Haldia, West Bengal, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Haldia Institute of Technology, ICARE Complex, HIT Campus, Haldia, West Bengal, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research, Salt Lake City, Kolkata, West Bengal, India ' Department of Production Engineering, Jadavpur University, Jadavpur, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Abstract: This paper presents a new strategy for reliability-based Preventive Inspection and Maintenance (PIM) scheduling of coal-fired power plants considering maintenance costs. Preventive Inspection and Maintenance Interval (PIMI) for any series or parallel subsystem is optimised at the reliability level where total (preventive and corrective) life cycle maintenance cost is the minimum. PIM of any series subsystem in a continuous operating power plant is difficult since off-working period is unavailable. Therefore a time management strategy followed by maintenance class formation is introduced for their PIM according to the estimated PIMIs. Here corrective maintenance of any failed subsystem along with PIM of the remaining subsystems in the same maintenance class is suggested. The case studies reveal that the optimum PIMIs of the subsystems vary from 75.8% to 93.2% reliability level. The proposed maintenance strategy is very simple, easy to implement, improves availability and reduces the maintenance costs.

Keywords: maintenance class; preventive maintenance; maintenance scheduling; coal-fired power plants; off-working period; maintenance intervals; reliability; maintenance costs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRS.2013.057422

International Journal of Reliability and Safety, 2013 Vol.7 No.4, pp.358 - 371

Received: 09 Sep 2012
Accepted: 06 Jul 2013
Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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