Radical Maintenance (RM) takes the root causes of failures as executive objects to make maintenance decisions. A Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is carried out on the function failure of equipment to perform RM and to create a maintenance plan using the combined methods of Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). Evaluation criteria and matrixes of criticality are used to evaluate the criticality level of failure modes. Moreover, Minimum Cut Sets (MCS) and importance calculation are applied to analyze the fault tree quantitatively. Based on our research, the concept and the analysis process of Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM) considering RM are proposed and then applied to an actual engineering project in the petrochemical industry. The results of the application are presented through a maintenance strategy based on the project analysis by establishing the evaluation criteria and matrixes of criticality for petrochemical rotating machines and a fault tree of compressor vibrations. The direct causes of the induction of vibration faults in rotating machinery are classified according to the fault mechanism and frequency domain features in this paper. The research shows that using RM in the traditional RCM can help assign maintenance resources rationally and improve the quality of maintenance strategies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.