Sustainable Damage Research Articles

An attempt to quantify the limits of failure detection by ferrography

An attempt is made to determine whether ferrography is likely to be able to detect the levels of damage that would lead to catastrophic failure in mining gear transmissions. A level of maximum sustainable damage before catastrophic failure would occur is set. The level is necessarily very approximate, but it provides an estimate of the amount of wear debris that would be released into the oil. This amount is considered against the background level of wear debris likely in underground equipment to give the increases produced by failures. The increases in the direct reading Ferrograph values produced by given increases in ferrous wear debris are derived from experimental data and are related back to the levels of maximum sustainable damage in mining gear boxes. It is concluded that for some mining gear transmissions ferrography is unlikely to be able to detect maximum sustainable levels of damage.