GUIDELINES FOR RAM ANALYSIS OF EPB TUNNEL BORING MACHINES

Earth pressure balance tunnel boring machines (EPB - TBMs) are favorably used in construction of tunnels in urban areas. These expensive machines with high operational costs require an exclusive study and knowledge on their components and subsystems and their failure and downtimes for time planning, cost control and performance prediction with a high accuracy. In this paper, guidelines for reliability, availability andmaintainability (RAM) analysis of an EPB machine are thoroughly expressed. Gathering and recording all daily failure and repair times and other maintenance tasks, dividing the machine into subsystems namely mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and water subsystems, graphical tests including trend, correlation test and statistical analysis are discussed in detail.

Keywords:

EPB – TBM , reliability analysis , availability analysis , maintainability analysis