Improved efficiency of bucket wheel excavator operation with advances in the control algorithm

摘要

Open pit mines with a continuous excavation use bucket wheel excavator as basic mining machine in the process of soft and medium-hard materials excavation. Excavators are being constructed today with a daily production capacity greater than 200,000 m3 due to constantly growing demand for greater quantities of excavated material. The analysis of the technology for excavating massifs, as well as the structure and geometry of excavators, has led to the most applied solutions for control of excavators being through automatic operation: ns/cosβ and P=const. Due to the non-homogenous structure of material and the inconsistent and unpredictable geometry of the excavated block, aforementioned methods do not provide the necessary efficiency for the operation of the excavator. Considering disadvantages of existing control strategies, a new control strategy is proposed in the paper which provides maximum efficiency of excavator operation according to the designed capacity. Advances made in the developed algorithm improve time, capacitive and overall energy efficiency of its operation. Results of measurements performed on the terrain verify the developed control strategy.