Seok-Heum Baek
The Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, vol. 23, no. 5, pp.1225-1233, 2009

Abstract : As the cumulative running times of a locomotive truck increases, degradation such as fatigue, wear, and deterioration occur. Particularly the container train and uncovered freight train, their maintenance cost during their lifetime is three times more than the manufacturing cost. Generally, for the freight train, corrective maintenance to repair a bad part after a breakdown is not adapted; however, preventive maintenance that fixes a bad part before a breakdown is. Therefore, it is important and necessary to establish a system of optimal preventive maintenance and exact maintenance period. This study attempts to propose a preventive maintenance procedure that predicts a repair period using reliability function and instantaneous failure rate based on fatigue test and load history data. Additionally, this method is applied to the end beam of an uncovered freight train, which is the brake part, and its usefulness is examined and analyzed.

Keyword : Preventive maintenance; Cumulative fatigue damage; Miner’s rule; Maximum likelihood estimator; Kaplan-Meier estimator