World-class condition monitoring of hydraulic systems involves the successful integration of a number of strategic elements. While in the past, walk-around inspections and gage data were the primary means of monitoring system health, today’s modem oil analysis programs apply a host of sophisticated new tools and instruments. Reliability teams at the plant site frequently commission small laboratories. In many cases the instrumentation suite includes portable and unattended sensors. The situational context is changing too as today’s hydraulic systems are increasingly designed for higher pressures, speeds, and temperatures. This paper presents a review of strategic elements that, when well conceived and implemented, can deliver vital aiding information for achieving even the toughest condition-based maintenance goals. These include the selection of test slate, deployment of incipient failure advisories, setting of targets and limits that define nonconforming conditions, exception testing, and proactive maintenance.

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Hot oil has typically received the most press, even in this publication. After all, oil is not like fine wines that get better over time. In fact, even the very best wine will stress-out when exposed to too much heat. For instance, most wines will age roughly twice as fast at 77°F compared to 55°F, which is why connoisseurs and collectors prefer cellar temperature to store their liquid assets.

In 1903, Svante Arrhenius won a Nobel Prize when he figured out the relationship between temperature and most chemical reaction rates. Often called the Arrhenius Rate Rule, it relates to the fact that lubricants, once they’ve exceeded their base activation temperature, will degrade or oxidize twice as fast for every 10°C (18°F) increase in temperature.

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You cannot monitor your way to a healthy machine just like frequent tests for cholesterol and blood pressure do not make their readings lower. Or do they? Monitoring physical conditions brings vision and awareness to health. It is continuous feedback about how we’re doing. In a similar manner, from measured readings we can report and categorize machine conditions as being safe, cautionary or at alarm levels (critical).

Bad news needs a rapid and strong delivery. And it needs an equally spontaneous response. Indifference and procrastination to nonconforming conditions becomes habit forming. It is true that no one likes a negative report, but it doesn’t make it go away; just like we cannot ignore-away the trauma of sudden-death machine failure. It is better to have to deal with 20 minor health inconveniences than the jolt of one terminal case of cancer.

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