Investing the Cause of Premature Tyre Failure of Open Pit Mine Dump Trucks: A Case of ABC Mine, Northeast Africa

Globally, earthmoving equipment is significant for the mine production system to ensure continuous flow of ground. This equipment is capital intensive and mining organizations face challenges in reducing operational cost, capital cost and maintaining high production capacities. As such, high equipment availability, safety of personnel and equipment, maintainability and controllable reliability become an important aspect. Several maintenance strategies have been developed, backed up by various models and frameworks to help minimize equipment failure as unplanned equipment downtime has a triple cost implication on the organization. These costs being, production cost in not meeting the output target, maintenance cost; the more breakdowns experienced, the more parts will be required to repair broken down equipment as well as maintenance labor cost which usually arises from unplanned work. Finally, fixed cost associated with mining operations such as power. To ensure that equipment downtime is minimized, routine equipment maintenance has been given priority, however, tyre performance has received less attention in comparison with other equipment components such as engines, transmissions, gearboxes and final drives. Tyres are one of the major cost drivers in a mining operation and at the same time a severe safety hazard due to their mass and stored energy. ABC Mine (not the real name) experienced a number of premature failure of Dump Truck tyres during the period January 2019 to April 2020 and the main cause of failure was not adequately established, though the failure modes data was collected and recorded through the Planning Section. Further, the Mine Management attributed these failures to poor operator practices and the harsh environmental conditions at the Mine. The aim of this study is therefore, to investigate the actual cause of the numerous tyre failures at ABC Mine. Reliability and Maintainability characteristics; Meantime Between Failure (MTBF) and Meantime To