Reducing the number of component failures in open pit dump trucks based on adjustments to the frequency of scheduled maintenance

Currently, dump trucks are the most widely used type of transport vehicle in open-pit mining operations. To maintain to reflect the specific operating conditions of each particular company. However, the use of these regulations often leads to insufficient readiness of the company's maintenance services for potential failures. To address this issue, the authors collected and analyzed statistics on failures of components and assemblies of dump trucks from two open-pit iron ore mining operations for the period of 2020–2023. The analysis revealed that the power unit, suspension, wheels, and frame were the least reliable components. Based on analyzing the strategies employed by the companies to maintain the established level of machine technical availability, we determined the target function for the optimal maintenance interval for the components considered. Upon transforming the target function according to the established laws of failure rate distribution based on the number of failures, we obtained two expressions that allow us to find the optimal maintenance frequency for the components under consideration. When testing these expressions, we compared the expected number of failures per year with the actual number of failures, which showed a significant reduction. The use of the calculated maintenance intervals resulted in a reduction in the number of emergency failures per year, e.g. by 73% (from 48 to 10) for the suspension; by 76% (from 38 to 9) for the wheels; and by 62% (from 34 to 13) for the power plant components.