When designing a new material handling system or looking at modifying an existing system there is always that nagging doubt in the back of your mind until you actually run material through, "is it sized properly?" Simulation programs allow you to model the system and find the oversized and undersized areas before you build them. This paper presents the use of discrete event simulation for equipment sizing. The conventional approach to sizing equipment for a material handling system has used design material balance and rules of thumb to provide a system capable of handling fluctuations. With the increased availability of discrete event simulation modeling software, it is now possible to model a system and provide a better understanding of the system capacity. An event graph based discrete event simulation package (SIGMA~C) is used to evaluate a coarse ore material handling system and determine if the equipment is under or over sized. By simulation of the proposed coarse ore system, the effect on though-put of various equipment capacities can be modeled. This can give the designer extra insight into the system and allow modifications to maintain desired capacity while working to achieve a lower installed cost. The operator can also use this tool to determine where bottlenecks exist when looking at proposed increased capacity alternatives.
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