Austress Freyssinet, a subsidiary of the Freyssinet Group, offers several specialist tools developed by English company, Midland Preventative Maintenance (MPM).
Geoffrey Holding, manager civil engineering said the company’s goal was to improve the knowledge and monitoring of structures and operational equipment in order to extend their lifespan at lower cost.
“Deciding whether to repair, refurbish or replace hydraulic components is difficult. The wrong decision may result in unnecessary expenditure. You need to evaluate the operational condition, but how?” he said.
Holding said MPM had developed a non-invasive analytical technique for testing the operational condition of hydraulic equipment. Called Hydraulic Integrity Testing (HIT), the technique can identify internal seal damage and valve wear at an early stage. Fluid by-pass flows from 50ml/min can be detected and quantified using portable monitoring equipment.
Used widely in UK Coal longwall mines, HIT is only one of the many techniques MPM has developed which will be made available to Australian mines through Austress Freyssinet.
Vibration analysis is also used to detect mechanical problems such as imbalance, misalignment, mechanical looseness cavitation and drive belt problems. Other techniques include Acoustic Emission, Oil Analysis, Thermography, and Shock Pulse Monitoring.
