Abstract
Failure in industrial processes is often related to wear and can cause significant problems. It is estimated that approximately 1–4% of the gross national product for an industrialized nation is related to abrasive wear. This work aims to numerically predict development of wear for full-scale mining applications in harsh sub-arctic conditions. The purpose is to increase the understanding of wear development in industrial processes and optimize service life and minimize costs related to wear. In the present paper, a granular material model consisting of the discrete element method (DEM) and rigid finite element particles is utilized to study wear in full-scale mining applications where granular materials and steel structures are present. A wear model with the basis in Finnie’s wear model is developed to calculate wear from combined abrasive sliding and impact wear. Novel in situ full-scale experiments are presented for calibration of the wear model. A simulation model of the rope shovel loading process is set up where the bucket filling process is simulated several times, and the wear is calculated with the calibrated wear model. From the full-scale validation, it is shown that the simulated wear is in excellent agreement when compared to the experiments, both regarding wear locations and magnitudes. After validation, the model is utilized to study if wear can be minimized by making small changes to the bucket. One major conclusion from the work is that the presented wear simulator is a suitable tool that can be used for product development and optimization of the loading process.
Highlights
Wear occurs in all processes where materials or components come into contact with each other
In previous work by Svanberg et al [38], it was demonstrated that the developed numerical model excellently captures the full-scale phenomenon of the granular material and the contact mechanics with a structural component such as a bucket
The calibration of the wear model was performed by determining suitable parameters and values of mesh size on structure components, the particle size distribution of granular material and smoothing cycles
Summary
Wear occurs in all processes where materials or components come into contact with each other. Granular material handling is a critical process in the mining industry. Large rope shovels of up to 1500 tons in weight loads blasted ore and waste rock to haul trucks. In this process, problems related to wear often occur. The buckets of these enormous machines can load up to 120 tons of fragmented rocks. The part on the rope shovel and other loading machinery that is in direct contact with the granular material is the bucket. Due to the large material turnover and the harsh conditions that the buckets are subjected to, the buckets are often the cause for both planned and unexpected machine downtime
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