Impulse force reductions and their effects on WBV exposures in high impact shovel loading operations

Abstract

When shovels load the dump trucks with over 100-ton passes under gravity dumping conditions, they will create a large impact force on the dump truck body which generates high frequency shock waves which expose the operators to whole body vibrations (WBV). The main cause of such truck vibrations is the large impact force due to the gravity dumping of large tonnage passes. Therefore a rigorous mathematical model has been developed for the impact force containing all the necessary factors upon which it depends. Latter, a thorough analysis shows that percentage reduction of 7.19%, 9.40%, 13.27%, 14.8%, 17.30% and 18.13% can be achieved by reducing the dumping distance to 6.33 m, 6.0 m, 5.5 m, 5.33 m, 5.0 m and 4.9 m, respectively, as compared to when the dumping distance was 7.33 m. Even more reduction in the magnitude of impact force can be observed if the shovel pass gets divided into more than two sub-passes. Therefore, these models can be used to figure out the number of sub-passes into which a single ore pass can be divided and/or the extent to which the dumping distance can be reduced which would reduce the impact force significantly enough to obtain safer yet economic operations.