What is Continuous Surface Mining?
Surface mining is a process of removing the soil and rock covered by mineral deposits without drilling and blasting. The cut material is pre-crushed and sized before being conveyed downstream.
Benefits of Continuous Surface Mining
Surface miner blades play a key role in bulk material cutting and due to this, the blades are subjected to wear, the wear in surface miners is dominated by abrasive and impact wear mechanisms and the blade wear will greatly reduce the cutting efficiency of the surface miner. These blades are difficult to repair, and the replacement cost is high.
Simulation and analysis of the surface miner with Altair® EDEM™ and Altair® OptiStruct® (OS) allows engineers to investigate the action of abrasive particles on the equipment. This provides a theoretical basis for design of the surface miner for improved wear resistance performance. In addition to wear, EDEM also helps to optimize the process parameters such as:
Prerequisites
EDEM-OS 2-way coupling via the Altair® SimLab® interface supports the software version specified below or later versions
Simulation Setup - Key Points
This EDEM+OS 2-way coupling surface miner demonstration case is applied to a sample model using a generic EDEM material model for the rock. The material is not calibrated and uses the relative wear model. Representative process parameters such as linear velocity and rpm of the drum are applied.
This example will help the user get familiar with the following:
In case any user tries to validate the simulation results with an experimental test then the user has to use a calibrated material model and appropriate process parameters.
OS Simulation Deck Setup
Simulation Results
For more EDEM applications please see our EDEM Webinars:
To get started with EDEM: