Volume 6, Issue 11, November 2015


Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Study of Critical Vehicle Maintenance Equipment in a Highly Demanding Automobile Workshop

Saleh Al. Rawahi and Sudhir C. V.

Caledonian College of Engineering, Oman, P.O. Box 2322, Al-Hail, PC 111, Sultanate of Oman

Abstract– An automotive maintenance workshop equipment represent backbone of having good vehicle maintenance, especially with vehicle fleet operator. The workshop equipment should be at high level of the availability as automotive service and maintenance workshop is one of the important sectors. Retaining the vehicles in services condition during their service life have a high demands by every single vehicle user and vehicle fleet organization, especially if it’s related to defense. This study was carried out with the intention to implement the RCM on selected few critical vehicle maintenance equipment and workshop in general. The scope of study was restricted to most frequently and most widely used equipment viz. Two post vehicle lift, four post vehicle lifts, Electric Power Air Screw Compressor and Tyre changer. All four equipment chosen for study has a good availability level which was due to the low operating period (relatively new) and the preventive maintenance. The air screw compressor has the lowest failure probability, and preventive maintenance strategy may be attributed for this. The equipment complexity effects on their availability of the spare parts. The least failure probability was on the Air screw compressor and the highest was on the four post vehicle lift. The four post vehicle lifts represent the highest reliability equipment. The availability of the equipment for the two and half year life’s period was high. The air screw compressor has the lowest failure probability, and in-house preventive maintenance strategy is attributed for this. The complexity and the availability of the spare parts of the equipment increase the MTTR. It was important to keep the availability of the equipment to the high level through controlling the related parameters.

Keywords— Mean Time to Between Failure (MTBF), Availability, Reliability and Maintenance

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Solutions of the Anisotropic Problem of the EPDE Using BIEM

Hassan Ghassemi, Abdulkhaled Zareei and Alireza Kazemipour

Deaprtment of Maritime Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
School of Engineering, Persian Gulf University, Bushehr, Iran

Abstract– This paper presents to solve an elliptic partial differential equation (EPDE) using boundary integral equation method (BIEM/BEM). This equation is employed to the anisotropic problem. First, this equation should be transformed into the canonical form in order to obtain the Green’s functions. Then, having the Green’s function, the integral representation of the solution is obtained by applying Green's identity for any point on the boundary or in the domain.

Keywords— Canonical Form, Green’s Function, Anisotropic and Boundary Integral Equation Method/Boundary Element Method (BIEM/BEM)

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Fault Diagnosis in Belts using Time and Frequency based Signal Processing Techniques

Abdulrahman Abdulshakoor Al Bulushi, G.R. Rameshkumar and M. Lokesha

Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Caledonian College of Engineering, P.O. Box 2322, CPO 111, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mangalore Institute of Technology and Engineering, Moodbidri, India

Abstract– The main aim of this paper is to analyze belt drive using Vibration Monitoring (VM) method. A belt drive experimental setup was designed, fabricated and used for experimental work to obtain realistic vibration data for different working condition. Three different faults such as side-cut-out, side-cut-in and loose & side-cut-out were created in the belt to study and to understand the behavior of the system during healthy and fault running condition. The experiments were conducted for healthy and faulty conditions at different speeds, lower speed of 540 rpm and at higher speed of 1000 rpm. The vibration signals were acquire using NI DAQ system with LabVIEW software. The results were presented for all the cases in the comparative manner and discussed. From the results it is found that the nature of belt fault has an effect on the characteristic frequency at 1X running speed for both driver and driven shaft. At the higher speeds the intensity of vibration is more for various faults and will be increasing as the fault increases.

Keywords— Rotating Machinery, Running Speed, V Belt and Vibration Monitoring

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Temperature-Viscosity Correlation for Biodiesel Blends Derived from Corn, Olive and Palm Oil

Rashid Humaid Al Naumi and Sudhir Chitrapady Vishweshwara

Caledonian College of Engineering, Oman, P.O. Box 2322, Al-Hail, PC 111, Sultanate of Oman

Abstract– As the use of biodiesel becomes more wide spread, engine manufacturers have expressed concern about biodiesel’s higher viscosity. In this paper demonstrates experimental investigation to study the effect of temperature on the viscosity of biodiesel and its blends at different temperatures. The feedstock which selected among five vegetable oils is Olive, Corn and Palm which have high variance in the viscosity. For biodiesel production, the catalyst used is NaOH pallets and methanol as alcohol. Biodiesel obtained through transesterification process, is tested to check the completion of transesterification reaction by methanol test, pH test and visual test. From the experimental investigation, it is understood that obtained viscosity of pure biodiesel haven’t reached to the petroleum diesel viscosity even after heating up to 65°C. however, the higher viscosity of pure biodiesel is reduced by blending it with diesel fuel, three types of biodiesel blends have studied B10, B20 and B50 at different temperature in the range 25-65°C in step of 10°C. The lower blends which are B10 & B20 have reached to the diesel viscosity at temperatures much lesser than 65°C for the different types of biodiesel blends. The blends which is lower than 30% of biodiesel is matching the viscosity diesel fuels, while higher blends (higher than 30% of biodiesel) need to be heated further higher temperatures, heating for higher temperatures is waste of energy and considered as not economical. From the experiments conducted a simple liner correlation model were obtained for different oils. The correlation was developed to predict the viscosity of biodiesel at any different temperature and any blend ratio. Predicting viscosity of biodiesel at different temperature gives the advantage to further research work and also save time and raw materials.

Keywords— Biodiesel, Viscosity, Blends and Temperature

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