The present life of fire trucks is a economic life which was calculated from decrease in value of the vehicle. But, it is reasonable that the exchanging time of fire pumpers should be decided by ability of performing its original function which exting...
The present life of fire trucks is a economic life which was calculated from decrease in value of the vehicle. But, it is reasonable that the exchanging time of fire pumpers should be decided by ability of performing its original function which extinguishes fire with water.
In this study, that time is called by functional life, which is calculated statistically by pump failed data. Korea Fire Technology Center which is a professional institution of fire trucks inspected 328 fire pumpers in 2019. From the inspection, 102 pumpers which had malfunction of pump were found. 102 cases were modified to 100 cases considering production date, then analyzed by statistical method. As result, the life data is adapted Weibull distribution, MTTF(mean time to failure) is 8.0 years. While it is short by 2.0 years in comparing with present life of pumper, this study is reasonable in that the last life of pumper was 8 years. So the functional life of pumpers can be calculated by a statistical method based on the failure data of built in pump.
The pump is composed of impeller and casing. As service time increases, the clearance of the two elements will be bigger. As a result, the leakage in pump increases to exceed the limit which cannot work principle role as a pump. In general, fatigue, erosion and corrosion are major mechanisms for pump failure. As results of this study, fatigue is not a main factor for failure because of small magnitude stress. Erosion by particles shows high level erosion rate
on suction area of impeller. Cavitation which is a key mechanism of corrosion presents at 7 suction depth, and is widen and strengthen at 7.1 depth. Finally, the life of fire trucks is affected by the motion of sucking natural water of ponds, rivers, etc.
For checking of effects of the decisional factors, I calculated the life of the fire trucks belonging to metropolitan cities. As result, the life is 8.6 years which is 0.6 years longer than all fire trucks’ life.