MTR 401 QUESDTIONS – DECEMBER 2023

State the purpose of the maintenance function with an organization. (June 2010)

 Identifying the area for implementation of preventive maintenance program.

 Planning and scheduling the total maintenance work.
 Standardization of maintenance work
 Ensuring safety of personnel and equipment.

Write down any objectives of planned maintenance. (April/May 017)

 To simplify complex maintenance tasks

 To provide a readily manageable maintenance program
 To facilitate an effective quality assurance process.

Define maintenance. (May/June 2013)(April/May 2015)

Maintenance is the routine and recurring process of keeping a
particular machine or asset in its normal operating conditions So
that it can deliver the expected performance or service without any
loss or damage.

List any two benefits of sound maintenance system. (Nov/Dec 2018)

i) Minimization of downtime
ii) improvement in availability of system
iii) Extended life of equipment

*What are the advantages of condition monitoring? (Nov/Dec

2016)

 Improved availability of equipment

 Minimized breakdown costs
 Improved planning
 Improved reliability
 Improved morality of the operating personnel

*List down the key features of condition monitoring. (Nov/Dec

2015)
- Improved availability of equipment
- Minimized breakdown costs
- Improved planning
- Improved reliability
- Improved morality of the operating personnel

What is the importance of condition based maintenance? (June

2010)
- Improved availability of equipment
- Minimized breakdown costs
- Improved planning
- Improved reliability
- Improved morality of the operating personnel

What is the use of lubrication? (Nov/Dec 2013)

The primary objective of lubrication is to reduce wear and heat

between contacting surfaces in relative motion. By means of
lubrication co-efficient of friction (which depends on area of
contact and amount of load acting) could be reduced.
Lubrication also aids to reduction of rust formation.

State the advantages and disadvantages of condition monitoring. (Nov/Dec 2018)

Advantages :
Improved availability of equipment, Minimized breakdown cost.
Disadvantages:
Gives only marginal benefits, Increases running cost

List any three typical test conducted on lubricating oil. (Nov/Dec 2018)
Viscosity, Oxidation, Nitration, Oil Contamination.

List out key features of conditioning monitoring. (April /May 2013)

 Links between cause and effect

 Systems with sufficient response
 Benefits outweighing cost

Why temperature monitoring is necessary? (April /May 2013)

To determine the degree of hotness or coldness or the level of heat intensity of the body.

Write down any four uses of condition monitoring. (April /May 2017)
Monitors the actual condition of the asset to decide what maintenance needs to be done.

What are the functions of temperature sensitive tapes? (April/May 2017)

Temperature range can be identified by operator or supervisor by looking at the strikers
from a distance itself.

What are the instruments used in condition monitoring? (Nov/Dec 2016)

Thermometer, pyrometer, accelerometer, spectroscopy
What is meant by thermography? (April/May 2015)
A Thermography technique uses the distribution of surface temperatures to assess the
structure or behavior of what is under the surface.
Types of Thermography:
i) Passive Thermography
ii) Active Thermography

Define condition monitoring. (Nov/Dec 2013)

Condition monitoring (CM) is one of the maintenance methods which are used for assess
both health and conditions of equipment ,machines ,system or process by absorbing,

Write about wear debris analysis. (Nov/Dec 2013)

Concentration and characterization of wear metals and other contaminants, suspended in
used oil, mainly from the machine components, through which the oil interfaces and
generates some wear metals and wear particles.
Contaminants (wear debris or wear particles) generated due to interaction between the
various components / parts of the machine and carried away by the lubricant to sumps,
these are known as Wear Debris Analysis or Contaminant Analysis or Wear Particle
Analysis.

Enumerate the benefits of vibration monitoring. (June 2010)

To identify the machine problems such as imbalance, misalignment, mechanical
looseness, bent shaft, bad bearings, gear damage, electrical troubles.

State the various method of condition monitoring techniques. (Nov/Dec 2009)

 Visual inspections
 Sensor assisted inspections
 Integrated monitoring systems

State the various objectives of maintenance planning. (April/May 2018)

The most important objective:
- Maximization of availability of equipment and facilities so as to help in achieving the
ultimate goals of the organization.
The following are the objectives of planned maintenance activity:
 To achieve minimum breakdown and to keep the plant in good working condition at
the lowest possible cost.
 To ensure the availability of the machines and services in an optimum working
condition.
 To keep the machines and other facilities in a condition to be used to achieve the
maximum profit without any interruption or hindrance.
 To keep the time schedule of delivery to the customers or to the sections for further
processing.
 To meet the availability requirements for critical equipments.
 To keep the maintenance costs as low as possible for non-critical equipments.
 To control the cost of maintenance related activities
 To meet the quality requirements of the product.
 To increase the profits of production systems
 To provide effective and trained supervision

State the benefits of sound maintenance management system. (April/May 2017)

(April/May 2018)
The profit of any industry depends only on the return of the investment.
The capital cost and operating cost are the major factors involved in any
industrial investment. The life of the equipment and maintenance schedule
information provided by manufacturer may not be realized in practice to
make the need for having a sound management system.
The following are the benefits of sound maintenance management system.
 Minimization of down time.
 Improvement in availability of system.
 Extended life of equipment.
 Safety and smooth operation of the process
 Provide adequate back up supply
 Minimization of normal expected wear and tear of equipment.
 Safety of the personal involved in the organization.
 Increased reliability of the system.
 Provide proper working environment.
 Cost effective maintenance boost the profit of the production system.

Explain the importance of lubricating of moving parts of industrial machineries.

(April/May 2018)

 In industrial equipments, the surface of the mechanical parts will have physical
contact on the neighboring parts to establish a relative motion between them. During
operation of the equipments, those contacting surfaces are subjected to friction which
depends on the area of material, properties of material etc which is undesirable.
 This leads to progressive damage resulting in material loss which is defined as wear.
Friction and wear also generate heat and responsible for the overall loss in system
efficiency. All these contribute to significant economic costs due to equipment failure,
cost for replacement and down time.
 The primary objective of lubrication is to reduce wear and heat between contacting
surfaces in relative motion. By means of lubrication coefficient of friction could be
reduced and the and turn heat and wear of the surfaces. Lubrication also aids to
 reduce oxidation and rust formation
 provide insulation in transformer application
  transmit mechanical power in hydro fluid power systems
 seal against dust, dirt and water.
 Selecting the right lubricant, the right amount of lubricant and the correct
application of the lubricant are essential to the successful performance of any bearing
because bearing lubricants serve three purposes:
 To reduce friction by separating mating surfaces.
 To transfer heat (with oil lubrication)
 To product from corrosion and with grease lubrication, dirt ingress
 The success of these three factors depends heavily on the film thickness on the
raceway and at the rib/roller end contact.

In detail discuss the process involved in condition monitoring. (Nov/Dec 2018)

Explain various methods and instruments used for conditioning monitoring. (Nov/Dec 2016)
Describe six categories of equipment condition monitoring methods. (May/June 2012)

The success of condition monitoring depends in the efficiency of identifying the

deteriorating trend in the machine components. For this purpose, it is essential to recognize
the source or cause of failure. There is variety of technologies that can and should be used as
part of a condition monitoring program. The extensive range of monitoring techniques
available is listed in table.

Type Method On/off line Comments

1.Visual Inspection Human eye On/off Covers a wide range

of highly effective
condition checking
and surface inspection
methods.
Off Can be used for internal inspection of
machines, good for detecting surface
corrosion, wear and severe defects like
cracks.
Closed circuit television On/off Permits detailed inspection of
(CCTV) inaccessible environment
machine parts. Image
recording and high resolution
analysis is a post-processing
possibility.

2. Vibration Shock pulse On provides the basis for

Monitoring monitoring On fault detection,
(SPM), Spike energy diagnosis and severity
and Kurtosis assessment.
Structural monitoring Off All of these techniques use
high frequency vibration
signals to detect and
diagnosis a range of faults
including rolling element
 bearing damage, lubrication
failure and leak detection.
3.Temperature Temperature crayons, On Simple and effective
Monitoring paints and taps aids to visual
inspection. Can
resolve body
temperature to
perform from a
distance at a glance.
Thermometers, On Range from stick-on
thermocouples thermometric strips to
permanently installed
thermocouple sensors. Can
give visual temperature
readout or an electrical input
to a hard-wired monitoring
system.
Infra-red camera On Can provide a detailed
surface temperature picture
and can be calibrated to give
quantitative measurement.

4. Lubrication Magnetic plugs and On/Off Analysis of debris

analysis filters picked up by plugs or
filter in an oil washed
systems. Mainly large
debris picked up, 100-
1000microns.
Ferrography N/A Analytical technique used to
separate ferrous debris by size
to enable microscopic
examination. Non-ferrous
debris can also be separated
but not graded.
Spectroscopy N/A Analytical technique is used
to determine the chemical
composition of the oil and
debris. Generally, for small
debris size 0-10 microns. A
contract service usually
available.

5. Crack monitoring Dye penetrant On/Off Detects cracks which

break the surface of
the material.
Magnetic flux On/Off Detects cracks at/near the
surface of ferrous materials.
6. Eddy current On/Off

7. Ultrasonic On/Off

8. Radiography Off

9. Weight loss coupons Off Coupons are weighed and

weight loss is equated to
material thickness loss due to
corrosion.

10. Incremental bore holes On A series of fine plugged

holes of incremental depths
which are periodically
unplugged and scrutinized for
leakage.

11. Electrical resistance On Electrical element and

potentiometer are used to
assess resistance change due
to material loss. Capable of
detecting material thickness
reduction of loss than 1mm.

With neat flow chart, explain onload and offload testing used in conditioning monitoring.
(Nov/Dec 2018)
LOAD TESTING
o Load testing is the process of putting demand on a system or device and measuring its
response.
o Load testing is performed to determine a system’s behavior under both normal and
anticipated peak load conditions.
o It helps to identify the maximum operating capacity of an application as well as any
bottlenecks and determine which element is causing degradation.
o When the load placed on the system is raised beyond normal usage patterns, in order to
test the system's response at unusually high or peak loads, it is known as stress testing.
o The load is usually so great that error conditions are the expected result, although no clear
boundary exists when an activity ceases to be a load test and becomes a stress test.
o There is little agreement on what the specific goals of load testing are.
o The term is often used synonymously with concurrency testing, software performance
testing, reliability testing, and volume testing.
o Load testing is a type of non-functional testing.
Discuss how infrared thermography inspection is more advantages over other temperature
monitoring techniques. (April/May 2018)

Infrared Thermography:
This technique uses the distribution of surface temperature to assess the structure or behavior
of what is under the surface. It is non-contact sensing method concerned with the
measurement of radiated electromagnetic theory. The energy emitted by a surface at a given
temperature is called spectral radiance and it is the property conserved with emissivity.
Types of thermography:
Passive thermorgraphy & Active thermography

How the monitoring of wear debris analysis in the lube oil is achieved. (April/May 2018)

Using a Scanning Electron Microscope of a carefully taken sample of debris suspended in

lubricating oil (taken from filters or magnetic chip detectors). Instruments then reveal the
elements contained, their proportions, size and morphology. Using this method, the site, the
mechanical failure mechanism and the time to eventual failure may be determined. This is

⦁ The lubrication oil in any system is often required to perform a number of functions such as
called WDA - Wear Debris Analysis.

⦁ Over the time the oil is likely to degrade losing its lubrication properties due to chemical
to reduce friction to cool components and to clean load bearing surfaces.

⦁ The properties of the oil can be monitored in a number of ways acidity for oxidation
breakdown and becoming contaminated by the ingress of collates fuels and other lubricants.

viscosity for lubrication flash point for contamination and chemical composition for chemical

⦁ In addition to the oil properties the presence of wear particles in the oil can also be used to
degradation.

⦁ These particles may be caused by year ingress (failure or filter) or corrosion of components.
predict a number of faults by observing their size, quantity, shape and material composition.

⦁ The chemical analysis of particles can often identify particular component which are foiling
for example, if silicon is found in the oil then a breach has occurred between the outside and

⦁ Lubricant analysis is an important and to condition monitoring.

the lubricating systems.

⦁ Laboratories recommended that samples of machine lubricant be taken as scheduled

intervals to determine the condition of the lubricating film that is critical to machine train

⦁ Oil monitoring is an extremely effective tool for assessing the condition of the oil itself and
operation.

⦁ It is particularly useful in equipment where vibration analysis is difficult to carry out

the components with which the soil comes into contact.

perhaps where components are remote from possible transducer mounting points.
What is thermal monitoring? Explain its principle and uses of thermograph? (Nov/Dec 2015)
Temperature is defined as a measure of velocity of fluid particles. It is a property which is
used to determine the degree of hotness or coldness or the level of heat intensity of a body.
Instruments for measuring ordinary temperature are known as thermometers and these
measuring high temperature are known as pyrometer. On large engines, sir handlers,
temperature transducers are included for all major bearings some packages include shut down
circuits and alarms of temperature gets above certain limits. The hardware for infrared is
becoming more and more powerful. An infrared gun takes on spot temperature without
imaging capacity.
Types of thermography:
 Passive thermorgraphy
 Active thermography

It is an externally applied thermal stimulation is needed to generate meaningful thermal

contrasts that will yield to the detection of sub surface abnormalities.
Methods of observation:
The two methods of observation possible are reflection and transmission.
- In reflection, greater resolution is obtained but the thickness of the material inspected is
small.
- In transmission a greater thickness of material can be inspected but the depth information is
lost since the thermal front has the some distance to travel whether or not its strength is
reduced by the presence of a defect.

The resolution is weak in transmission hence it is necessary to use more sensitive detection
equipment. The approach in reflection is good for detection of defects located closer to the
heating surface while the transmissive approach reveals defects located to the near surface.

Discuss the various types of NDT for conditioning monitoring. (April/May 2015)
NDT plays important role in crack monitoring. NDT is defined as a method of inspecting on

⦁ Penetrant testing
object without impaling its future usefulness major methods include:

⦁ Magnetic particle testing

⦁ Ultrasonic testing
⦁ Radiography testing

There are also some ranges of other new techniques that have particular specialized

⦁ Eddy current testing

applications in limited fields. They include

⦁ Acoustic emission methods

⦁ Thermography
⦁ Holography
⦁ Leak testing Liquid Penetrate Test Introduction

What is leakage monitoring? Explain some of the leakage medium used for conditioning
monitoring. (June 2010)
Leakage monitoring is mostly used for quality assurance and metallographic analysis to
assess the quality of metals and quality of procedures during making, shaping and breaking
of metals in industries.
Leakage monitoring program does not measure total crack depth and width but change in
crack width. This change in crack width is called crack displacement the crack displacement

⦁ Differential thermal expansion

measured by the sensors may be driven by any combination of the factors listed below

⦁ Structural changes in various components of machine

⦁ Shrinkage and thrusting of different components temperature and humidity changes
⦁ Fatigue and aging of components etc.

Explain the general structure of computerized maintenance management system. (Nov/Dec

2018)
Explain the role of computers in maintenance with suitable example. (April/May 2017)

There is a need to integrate the decision support tools in maintenance function.

Support tools in maintenance planning and execution for the efficient discharge
of the maintenance function.
There is an increasing trend in application of information based decision
support systems in different departments of modern industry.
Thus computers have become an indispensable requirement in maintenance
management
Computer is an efficient and reliable tool for maintenance personal to plan and
implement their programmers.
The success of CMMS depends on the quality of integration of computer
system in maintenance management.
CMMS is used to track all maintenance costs and equipment repairs. This tracking is
accomplished by the monitoring of work orders. This task will provide necessary
information to track and plan and maintenance budgets.
Effective cost control through CMMS is also achieved by the monitoring of purchase
and inventory costs. This will track spare part costs and aims to avoid excessive inventories.
This module also helps in vendor selection and monitor the shipping time.

Explain in detail computerized maintenance management system.

Explain job order system with an example. (Nov/Dec 2016)
Structure of a Computer Assisted Maintenance System:
Same as 2
Two methods of job evolution
1. Ranking method
Jobs are arranged from highest to lowest in such a way of their value or merit to the
organization
2. Classification method
A predetermined number of job groups or job classes are established and jobs are
assigned to these classifications.

………………….END !!!