Just In-Time Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants

摘要

The goal of this project has been to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a new technology for maintenance engineering: a Just-In-Time Maintenance (JITM) system for rotating machines. The JITM system is based on several key developments at Texas A and M over the past ten years in emerging intelligent information technologies, which if integrated into a single system could provide a revolutionary approach in the way maintenance is performed. Rotating machines, such as induction motors, range from a few horse power (hp) to several thousand hp in size, and they are widely used in nuclear power plants and in other industries. Forced outages caused by induction motor failures are the reason for as much as 15% - 40% of production costs to be attributable to maintenance, whereas plant shutdowns caused by induction motor failures result in daily financial losses to the utility and process industries of $1 M or more. The basic components of the JITM system are the available machine sensors, that is electric current sensors and accelerometers, and the computational algorithms used in the analysis and interpretation of the occurring incipient failures. The JITM system can reduce the costs attributable to maintenance by about 40% and it can lower the maintenance budgets of power and process plants by about 35%, while requiring no additional sensor installation. As a result, the JITM system can improve the competitiveness of US nuclear utilities at minimal additional cost.