Analysis of Stress Distribution on the Bucket of a Dragline Machine

Abstract

Overburden excavation is an integral component of the surface mine production chain. In large mines, the walking dragline is a trenchant and dominant mining machine. Due to the economic advantages, dragline is widely utilized machinery in the overburden excavation. These earthmovers carry out the earthmoving process with dragging, hoisting and dumping actions of the bucket. Dragline excavator’s efficiency is critically important, since poor performance of a dragline in the mine site directly affects the total efficiency of ore production. The development of giant surface mining ventures in India like Bina and Jayant with setting up of higher coal production targets (up to 10 million tonnes per annum) calls for systems to remove large volume of overburden in shortest possible time. Therefore, productivity studies about dragline should be directed to decrease cycle time and increase payload, with avoiding catastrophic failure. In this regard, determination of stress distribution on the front-end components of dragline is meaningful to detect the external factors against dragline operation. In order to provide insight into the dragline bucket-formation interaction and stress distribution on the bucket, this paper provides an insight to the resistive force formation of horizontally moving dragline bucket where passive earth forces of the formation create resistance to the movement This paper denouement the background for analysis of resistive force against the bucket action of a walking dragline and also an analytic approach for cutting resisting model has been developed.