Reliability centered maintenance of the suspension system of an armoured tracked vehicle according to field failure data and failure modes and effects analysis

Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) has become important since the early 1970's in the aviation industry. Along with the reliability-centered maintenance report prepared by Nowlan and Heap (1978) for the US Air Force, the efforts in this area have intensified. In this thesis, reliability centered maintenance plan constructed for the suspension system of a tracked armored vehicle. Aftersales Field Failure Data and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) results have been used to develop reliability centered maintenance for tracked armored vehicle suspension system. Turkish Army field failure data of the suspension system of a specific tracked armored vehicle has been analyzed and categorized. Suitable distribution models have been applied to the suspension system sub-components from field failure data in Reliasoft software. FMEA has been made for tracked armored vehicle suspension system according to the MIL-STD-1629. FMEA and reliability parameters of the suspension system is used to find the best suited maintenance model from reliability centered maintenance flow chart. With the application of reliability-centered maintenance, the following features of the suspension system are expected to be improved: Product reliability and life, availability, product safety, product quality, product life cycle cost. By comparison of Reliability centered maintenance based maintenance activities results against supplier and experience based maintenance activities, availability is improved around %6 and all the catastrophic severity class failures are prevented.