The feasibility of vibration analysis as a mechanism of failure analysis in failure investigations and root cause analysis

M.Phil.“Failure is one of the unfortunate facts of life”. This is the very first statement in the book by Coetzee (1998). This statement is unfortunately true, leading to the fact that failure is a reality, to be dealt with. Dealing with it in a proactive way will provide warnings of an approaching failure. Dealing with it in a reactive way will go through the “surprising pain” of an unexpected breakdown or downtime. In both cases the source of failure must be known to prevent it from happening again. Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a structured method of determining the reason (root cause) of a failure. On the other hand, Vibration Analysis is one of the best known methods of condition monitoring and has the capability to indicate a reason for failure, although not necessarily the root cause or causes. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the possibility to combine the RCA method with Vibration Analysis as forensic science to improve the success of finding root causes and their solutions