Improved Operating Performance of Mining Machine Picks

Failure Probability Prediction of Thermally Stable Diamond Composite Tipped Picks in the Cutting Cycle of Underground Roadway Development

“…Although the study focused on TSDC tipped picks, the developed approach can also be applied to other types of picks.Picks are a type of rock cutting tool which are broadly equipped on excavation machines such as continuous miners and roadheaders to break rock in the mining and construction industries. Understanding the performance and reliability of picks is important for industries to increase production efficiency, improve production safety and reduce production cost [11,12]. Many efforts including laboratory experiments and field trials have been made to study picks from various aspects .…”

“…Many efforts including laboratory experiments and field trials have been made to study picks from various aspects . An important aspect of these studies is pick force analysis [4,5,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. During the course of rock cutting, a pick is generally subjected to three orthogonal forces-cutting force, normal force and lateral force [13].…”

“…These forces can be affected by various factors including depth of cut (DOC) [5,[12][13][14][15], rock strength [13-15] and attack angle [5]. Another important aspect of pick performance study is failure analysis [11,12,17,[20][21][22]24,25], including identification of typical pick failure modes [17], investigation of the causes of high consumption of picks [12], protection of pick body by use of a cap tip [12,20] and understanding of the body bending failures of picks [21].Although existing studies largely focused on WC tipped picks, studies with a focus on the performance and failure characteristics of TSDC tipped picks have also been carried out (see [3][4][5][6]11,25]). These studies showed that while TSDC tips were able to cut hard rock with a uniaxial compressive strength of 260 MPa [24], they were less capable to bear bending and impact forces than WC tips due to their lower toughness [5].…”

“…These forces can be affected by various factors including depth of cut (DOC) [5,[12][13][14][15], rock strength [13-15] and attack angle [5]. Another important aspect of pick performance study is failure analysis [11,12,17,[20][21][22]24,25], including identification of typical pick failure modes [17], investigation of the causes of high consumption of picks [12], protection of pick body by use of a cap tip [12,20] and understanding of the body bending failures of picks [21].…”