Glossary
Controls and ancillaries
Reliability-centred maintenance
Also known as RCM, reliability centered maintenance.
Reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) is a structured framework for deciding what maintenance is needed and when, by analysing the failure modes, consequences and detection methods for each asset. RCM became the dominant industrial-maintenance methodology in aviation, nuclear and process industries during the 1990s–2000s.
RCM and sonic-horn cleaning
RCM thinking supports the case for sonic-horn cleaning at the outage-avoidance level:
- Failure mode — forced outage from ESP hopper bridging, baghouse ΔP rise, cement kiln snowman, recovery-boiler superheater pluggage
- Consequence — substantial revenue and operational impact (see forced outage economic figures)
- Detection — typically late; failure is recognised only when it triggers the outage
- Maintenance response — sonic horns as continuous preventive intervention
This RCM logic is the structured argument behind the business case for installing acoustic cleaning on fouling-prone applications.
Related terms
Related terms
- Predictive maintenancePredictive maintenance schedules service based on actual equipment-condition signals rather than fixed time intervals. Increasingly applied to sonic-horn cleaning systems via SPL trend monitoring.
- Mean Time Between FailuresMTBF is the average time between failures of repairable equipment. The headline reliability metric for industrial maintenance planning.
- Availability factorAvailability factor is the percentage of total hours that a plant is available to generate, whether or not it actually does. Distinguishes equipment readiness from market dispatch.