Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag
DOI 10.1007/s13198-014-0240-7
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Reliability centered maintenance of cone crusher: a case study
R. S. Sinha • A. K. Mukhopadhyay
Received: 27 June 2013
 The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and
Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden 2014
Abstract A cone crusher is used for crushing rock. The
vast majority of these installations are found in mineral
processing plants. The Reliability of the crusher influences
the productivity of the plant. The purpose of this paper is to
focus the application of reliability centered maintenance
with an aim to improve the reliability of the cone crusher.
reliability tools failure modes and effects analysis and total
time to test-Plot are explored in support of the study.
Crusher component failure details for one year have been
considered for the analysis.
Keywords Reliability centered maintenance
Failure
mode and effect analysis
Total time on test
Risk priority
number
Cone crusher
1 Introduction
The supply of minerals, rocks and aggregates are crucial
for the continuous development of today’s society. The
performance and efficiency of existing crushers are to be
improved in order to meet the escalating demand (Lee and
Evertsson 2011). A cone crusher is used in mineral pro-
cessing plant as a secondary or tertiary type rock crusher.
In this case study, explored the general objective of the
failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and FTA ana-
lysis work is to evaluate the application impact of the
reliability centered maintenance (RCM) methodology on a
power generating system. It was developed a case study on
R. S. Sinha (&)
A. K. Mukhopadhyay
Mechanical & Mining Machinery Engineering, Indian School of
Mines, Dhanbad 826004, Jharkhand, India
e-mail: ravishankarism0181@gmail.com
the oil circulation system. This study was done making use
of the magnitudes monitored by the plant supervision and
control system (de Queiroz Souza and Álvares 2008). Any
failure of crusher component may stop functioning of the
plant. To improve the crusher reliability, RCM may be
practiced to improve overall reliability of the plant. RCM
involves failure mode effect analysis as one of the impor-
tant tools to define, identify and eliminate known and/or
potential failures, problems, errors etc. for the equipment.
Total time on test (TTT) plot is a graphical method which
is also, used while analysing the time before failures
(TBF). In present work, reliability centered maintenance
technique involve FMEA analysis and TTT-Plot are used
to assess the reliability of a cone crusher in a processing
plant.
2 The equipment
Cone crushers are extensively used for rock fragmentation
and as a secondary crusher or tertiary crusher in a crushing
circuit. The different parts of the cone crusher are bowl,
mantle, eccentric assembly, liners etc. The drive shaft rotates
the mantle eccentrically, compressing rock between the
mantle and concave. Power is transmitted from the source to
the shaft through V-belt drive arrangement. The mantle is
backed with plastic cement, or zinc, or more recently with an
epoxy resin. The throw of cone crushers is larger than that of
primary crushers, to withstand heavier working stresses. The
bowl can be held down either by an annular arrangement of
springs or by a hydraulic mechanism (Wills and Napier-
Munn 2006). The presence of water during crushing may
increase the rate of liner wear rates. Figure 1 shows a sim-
plified view of cone crusher.
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Table 1 Failure data of cone crusher

Sr. Failure type Remarks No. of Time to
no. failure repair

1 Bowl liner damage Bowl liner changed 3 3

5
8
2 Socket assembly Socket assembly 3 6
allenkey bolt allenkey bolt 10
problem change
5
3 Mantle liner damage Mantle liner 2 3
changed 3
4 Discharge conical Discharge conical 2 4
Fig. 1 Operating principle of a cone crusher
liner damage liner changed 12
5 Lubrication oil Lubrication oil pipe 1 14
3 FMEA and TTT-plot pipe damage change
6 Socket liner problem Socket liner 1 3
changed
Reliability centered maintenance uses many methods some
7 Mantle damage Mantle changed 1 6
traditional one and other recent and modern ones. One such
8 Lubrication oil Lubrication oil 1 4
tool is FMEA is one of the most effective low-risk tools to problem change
minimise possible failure and for identification of more 9 Bowl damage Bowl changed 1 4
efficacious solutions. It is particularly useful in evaluating a
10 Dust seal damage Dust seal changed 1 8
new process prior to implementation and in assessing the
impact of a proposed change to an existing process. It is a
technique to identification the failure in each component,
its causes and consequences on the process equipment as analysis of the function, modes and effects of failure of
well as on the whole system. The FMEA analysis is carried components of the cone crusher is shown in Table 2.
out by studying a survey of the functions of each part, FMEA is performed to find the potential failure modes
failure mode of the part and its effect. In this exercise, of the failure. The Risk priority number (RPN) is used to
FMEA and TTT-plot techniques are used. FMEA is the rate each potential problem according to three rating scales.
tool of product and process analysis that allow to a sys- The factors for parts evaluation consist on a series of cri-
tematic evaluation of possible failure and controlling the teria used to check the criticality or risk priority of a
preventive actions. The TTT plot assess the condition of component. In this evaluation the influence of three
equipment health with due consideration to time between parameters severity, occurrence and failure detection are
failures. In this failure data are collected from a mineral considered. These parameters normally are measured in a
processing plant. scale of 1–10, the number 1 shows a lesser importance of
the failure, in the point of view of determined factor, and
number 10 indicates that the biggest importance that must
4 Result and discussion be attributed to the failure. The critical components,
function of the components, functional failure of compo-
The type of failure, number of failure time to repairs and nent, failure mode and effect of component failure of the
actual repairs performed are collected from the plant. The crusher under study is shown in Table 2. The severity
detail is presented in Table 1. The spread sheet of analysis assessment based on number of failures and their respec-
of the function, modes and effects of failure of components tive detection criteria are presented in Table 3.
of the Cone crusher is shown in Table 2. Severity: It is an index that reflects the gravity of the
Explanation of each column of the presented form: failure consequences. Occurrence: It is an index defined
Function is an item or system executes in a specified per- rates of the failure will occur. Detection: It is an index
formance standard, part is an identification of each part constructed based on the probability estimative that a
fitted to the system, Function of part is to description of failure can be detected. The classification criteria of each
task that part must be executed, functional failure of part is one of these parameters are presented in the above Table 3.
the possible failures related to each part, mode of failure is RPN is calculated by the product of the three indices
a description of the of failure and effect of failure is con- (Severity 9 Occurrence 9 Detection). RPN is the practical
sequence of the rate of the failure. The spread sheet of way to prioritize certain failures and to evaluate which step

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Table 2 FMEA of the cone crusher

Description of system functions of the crusher
Component Function of component Functional failure of Mode of Effect of failure
component failure

Bowl To crush the ore Bowl damage Sudden jerk Crushing efficiency decreases
Bowl liner To protect the bowl or the Bowl liner damage Wear and Cause bawl damage
crushing shell tear
Dust seal To protect the cone bearing Dust seal damage Wear Cause entry of dust & moisture into
moving parts
Mantle To break the ore Mantle damage Sudden Crushing efficiency decreases
impact
Mantle liner To protect the mantle Mantle liner damage Wear and Causes mantle damage
tear
Discharge conical To protect the discharge shell Conical liner damage Wear and Causes damage to discharge area
liner tear
Lubrication oil Supply oil from oil tank to Oil pipe damage Pipe Lubrication stoppage
pipe different parts Breakage

Table 3 Criteria for failure modes evaluation

Index Severity Occurrences Detection

1 No effect No failure in last 1 year Very high

2 Minor, corrected immediately by the 1 failure in the last 1 year Very high
maintenance
3 Minor, system operable with some degradation 2 failures in the last 1 year High
of Performance
4 Very low, system operable with significant 3 failures in the last 1 year Moderately high
degradation of performance
5 Low, system inoperable without damage. 4 or 5 failures in the last 1 year Moderate
6 Moderate, system inoperable with minor damage 6 failures in the last 1 year Low
7 High, system inoperable with equipment damage 7 failures in the last 1 year Very low
8 Very high, system inoperable with destructive 8 failures in the last 1 year Very low
failure without compromising safety
9 Hazardous with warning, very high severity 9 failures in the last 1 year Very low
ranking when a potential failure mode affects
safe system operation with warning
10 Hazardous without warning, very high severity 10 failures in the last 1 year Very low
ranking when a potential failure mode effects
safe system operation without warning

is to be taken first. The form of FMEA punctuation for the
cone crushers is shown in the Table 4. It can be observed,
through the field occurrence in Table 4 that, throughout the
last one year, failures had occurred in seven components: 3
failures in the bowl liner, 3 in socket assembly, 2 in mantle
liner, 2 in discharge conical liner and 1 in bowl, lubrication
oil pipe, dust seal and mantle.
TTT-plot has been used for analysis of data from
repairable units (Kumar et al. 1989). The scatter curve can
be presented as i/n versus Ui, where, i is the number of
failure and n is the number of observations for time
between failures. The value of Ui can be calculated as the
ratio of Si/Sn, where, Si is the TTT at time ti and Sn is the
TTT at nth failure, when i = 1, 2, 3………n. The TTT plot
would lie in the range of 0–1. When the TTT plot would
rise or fall about the diagonal, it would indicate that the
failure rate is constant. However, when the plot is concave
upwards, it would suggest that failure rate is decreasing
i.e., the condition of unit or the machine as a whole is
deteriorating in terms of failure. In case, the TTT plot is
concave downwards, it is suggesting an increasing failure
rate i.e., the condition of individual unit or the total
machine is improving. In general, the TTT plots are
indicative of the increase or decrease in failure rate. A large

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Table 4 FMEA punctuation form value of the ratio of failure rate to repair rate would help to
Cone crusher
decide the maintenance activities to achieve an improve-
ment in reliability. The TTT-plot (Fig. 2) for this equip-
Component and Factors for failure mode evaluation ment, it is indicated that the TBFs follow a life distribution
their failure
mode Severity Occurrence Detection General with decreasing failure rate.
evaluation
(RPN)

Bowl 2 2 3 12 5 Conclusion
Bowl liner 2 4 1 8
Dust seal 7 2 3 42 These two reliability analysis tools, different results can be
Mantle 3 2 3 18 observed. The FMEA analysis indicates that the critical
Mantle liner 2 3 1 6 components of the system are the dust seal, lubrication oil
Discharge 3 3 1 9 pipe, mantle and bowl. The FMEA result comes from the
conical liner relatively high severity that the failures in these compo-
Lubrication oil 3 2 5 30 nents present. These failures are considered severe and
pipe must be prioritized in an eventual decision taking about
maintenance. As above all the failure can be observed in
the TTT-plot. The TTT-plot represents the maintenance of
the Cone Crusher is satisfactory. If the maintenance of the
equipment is satisfactory then preventive maintenance of
the crusher could reduce the maintenance costs and also
predict the failure. Such studies are important for better
utilization of the equipment.

References

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investigation for a fleet of load-haul-dump machines in a
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Lee E, Evertsson CM (2011) A comparative study between cone
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Eng 24:188–194
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Fig. 2 TTT-plot of standard head cone crusher 7th edn. Elsevier Science & Technology Books, Amsterdam

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