Granular Flow - Application
Excavation by draglines
Draglines are used to remove overburden in open cut coal mining.
A bucket (with a capacity of up to 100 m3) is lowered
to the surface of the overburden and dragged up the slope towards the
machine. The leading edge lifts material into the bucket, which fills and
is then emptied. The performance of these extremely expensive machines is
affected by the bucket design, the mode of operation, the attachment of
the cables (rigging) and the material properties of the overburden.
A 5 m long Esco bucket is dragged by the cables up a slope of 22o
with speed 1.75 m/s. The pre-blasted overburden is modelled as discs
with diameters between 10 and 30 cm.
The model predicts bucket load, drag, wear, dynamic load on the
interior of the bucket and realistic fill times.
Download QuickTime
animation (11.5MB)
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