Abstract
A collection of reliability engineering studies, over a period of 13 years, on a large series of, non-structural, repairable components, of a Subway Revenue Fleet show that a greater proportion of the items examined exposed Non-Ageing related failure patterns over its “In-Service” cycles. These results of In-service incursions, modeled by the use of probability distributions widely used in lifetime series analysis, revealed wear out patterns in agreement with studies in aircraft and ship fleets, as documented in Nowlan & Heap Reliability Report for UAL 1968, Broberg 1973 and MSP 1982 [1]. Remarkably, the distinctiveness of patterns which allow for the characterization of Age-Related from Non-Ageing related failure distributions provide a strategic decision making framework for component maintainability and engineering performance optimization within Rolling Stock Subway Maintenance Operations [14]. We propose to consider the study results a novel practical quantitative confirmation of the original Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) [1], Failure Patterns, in Mass Transit Rail Rolling Stock.
