Global’s third-party gear engineering team specializes in girth gear reliability and failure analysis consulting for gear driven mills.

We pride ourselves on being able to provide realistic and site specific (RCM) based maintenance plans and solutions for risk improvement, critical asset reliability and up time.

When a site determines that its mills are not meeting its expectations in its current operating context, an RCM review plan; in compliance with SAE JA1011, can be facilitated and conducted for each of the mills. Using industry best practice methods, manufacturer recommendations, and information from maintenance and operations.

Our approach to girth gear reliability and failure analysis is also combined with RCM to systematically determine the root cause of failure, develop proper maintenance tasks, and/or engineering changes to reduce the probability and/or consequence of functional failure if the failure is ongoing.

And after a failure has occurred to determine the corrective actions needs to prevent future failures from the failure mode identified.

Global’s engineers always start with the 7 basic questions when developing a Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Program.

RCM Approach (7 Basic Questions)

  1. Each girth gear system needs its functions and desired standard of performance clearly identified, in its present operating context.
  2. Determine how the gear system can fail to fulfill its functions
  3. Determine the causes of each functional failure (failure modes).
  4. Determine what happens when each failure occurs (failure effects).
  5. Classify the consequences of failure (failure consequences).
  6. Determine what should be performed to predict or prevent each failure (tasks and task intervals).
  7. Determine if other failure management strategies may be more effective (one-time changes).
Girth Gear Reliability and Failure Analysis
Gear Tooth Failure Analysis Chart

The answers from these questions can provide the maintenance and reliability team a solid RCM program that will enhance their availability, provide risk improvements, and maximize their life cycle management of their particular asset.

Gear Tooth Crack Failure Analysis
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