Vibration diagnostics of hydraulic dozer drives

Abstract

The most labor-consuming maintenance element in mining is repair—it can amount to 70 % of total by-work load. Improvement of repair methods and reduction in number of equipment failures can save cost of repair. An important task in operation of mining machines is studying the feasibility of transition from the scheduled maintenance and repair to the condition-based maintenance. To this effect, it is necessary to upgrade diagnostic techniques. Hydraulic drives are widely employed in mining machines. One of the ways of trouble-shooting improvement is advancement of vibration diagnostics advantageous for the eliminated assembling–dismantling, simplicity of the vibration sensor installation, and low sensitivity to various exposures of a mining machine. Vibration diagnostics enjoys wide application in many areas of engineering and is highly promising for diagnosing of hydraulic dozer drives. This article presents the experimental studies into vibration spectra of walls in the pressure and drain lines in some dozers. The studies have found that the main harmonics of feed pulsations governed by operation of volumetric pumps is observed along the whole length of the pressure line. Therefrom, the authors put forward an idea of detecting spillovers in hydraulic systems. The theoretical computations of vibration parameters are currently very complicated. The leading part in the vibration diagnostics development should belong to the experimental research.