Reliability analysis and maintenance policy of radiators for a large fleet of buses

Abstract

Parts in an engineering system are subject to deterioration caused by friction, impact, metal fatigue, etc. which occur when the system is in operation, and also due to ageing of its plastic and rubber parts and rusting of metal parts. In order to ensure that a system functions properly, it is important to perform maintenance which rectifies the faults in its parts as time passes. In this paper the authors use Weibull analysis to investigate the failure pattern of radiators in the cooling system of different bus types in a large public transportation company, and work out from a costing point of view that regular preventive maintenance is not recommended but overhaul of the radiators should be done once in several years when the bus undergoes a major overhaul. In this analysis, the renewal function of the Weibull distribution has to be computed. A table for the renewal function has been computed as well. The manpower requirement for the maintenance of radiators for the bus fleet is also investigated. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.