An Effectiveness Indicator for a Mining Loader Based on the Pressure Signal Measured at a Bucket's Hydraulic Cylinder

Abstract

Nowadays, the utilization ofmonitoring systems and advanced IT technology in order to support maintenance management in complex machinery systems is widely-used at all levels of the maintenance. One of the purposes for using such systems in a copper ore underground mine is to assess the performance of self-propelled machines, e.g. loaders. The effectiveness of the loader operation might be estimated by taking into account different sources of information and evaluation criteria. This paper presents a method for the identification of a loader operation regime: loading, haulage and unloading of ore. It is expected that such a cycle should be repeated during a single shift. The proposed algorithm is based on the measurements of the hydraulic pressure acquired on the bucket's hydraulic cylinder. This signal is very noisy, thus further analysisrequires it's smoothing. We propose to incorporate the Kalman filter in order to smooth the signal. Kalman filtering is commonly used in optimal filtering of nonstationary signals. Further steps of the proposed algorithm indicate moments of basic loader's routines. Finally, the information about the number and duration of loading and unloading cycles is provided. The algorithm is illustrated by an analysis of real data from the monitoring system that describes the pressure measured on the bucket's hydraulic cylinder during the entire 6-hour-long shift.