Determination of the Most Opportune Time for Industrial Circuit Breaker Replacement

The establishment of a replacement strategy for all critical industrial assets is of vital necessity since it guides into proactive measures of asset management. Asset management is of vital necessity to industrialists as it guides them into decision making concerning management of industrial assets in a proper way that yields maximum productivity and minimum operational expenditures. Replacement frame works are time based as they enable timely maintenance of an asset so as to maintain or increase its remaining useful time. Replacement strategies are a measure of predictive and preventive maintenance. The failure to carry out predictive and preventive maintenance will escalate degradation of an asset and shorten its remaining useful life. This study compared three replacement models for predicting optimal replacement time of industrial circuit breaker replacement namely: the Weibull Analytical Model (WAM), Markov Analytical Model (MAM) and Equipment Inspection Method (EIM). The comparison of the models was to achieve the most accurate estimates of expected time of replacement. The optimal time of replacement was determined for ten condition based factors that determined CB reliability. These factors included: insulation integrity, Moisture, Dust, ambient temperature, inaccurate sizing, mechanical failure due to switching of the MCB, MCCB, and ACB, premature failure of the thermal magnetic trip mechanism and arcing of contacts. The EIM was discovered to be the most accurate model due to its high level of genuineness as its values of optimal replacement time were the earliest in value. Additionally, the EIM displayed a high level of reliability and criterion validity compared to other methods such as the WAM and MAM