2.

CHARACTERISTICS OF LIFE CYCLE OF BUCKET WHEEL EXCAVATOR

On the fig. 1 we can see structure of old age on the bucket wheel excavators, on the open step mines of Electric power industry of Serbia. The largest percent of the bucket wheel exavators are older then 25 years, which is the optimal economic life time of these machines according to the some earlier recomandations of the manufacturers. It is evident that it is necessery to execute some serious actions of revitalization, redesignig and modernization, which are principialy prolonging excavators lifetime. The very notion of revitalization contains redesigning and modernization in itself. This is especialy necessary for the machines and their parts that have a very long lifetime of service, because of the significiant development in usage techniques and materials. It is interesting that the youngest excavators (purchaced during the eightees and leater) are mostly with the greatest capacicity.
40% 30% 20% 10% 6.250% 0% 0-5 5 - 10 10 - 15 15 - 20 20 - 25 25 - 35 35 and more years old 12.500% 3.125% 6.250% 21.875% 12.500% 37.500%

REDESIGNING AND OPEN STEP MINES MACHINERY

Milo TANASIJEVI Dragan IGNJATOVI Abstract: This article will present the basic characteristics of bucket wheel excavators life cycle, especially the period of service and maintenance. In addition, excavators performance will be stressed, as well as the emergence of the so called infant mortality. Therefore, active participation of the machine user is essential in the removal of these failures and in bringing excavators into failure stationary stage with low constant failure rate. Serving to this aim, redesigning has been developed as an open step activity. Key word: Redesigning, Life cycle, Maintenance, Bucket wheel excavators

Fig 1. Oldage structure of bucket wheel excavators in the Electric power industry of Serbia Lifetime cycle of machine is composed of the five phases /1/: conceptual and idea solutions, development and design, manufacturing and realization, service and maintenance, and disusing. The machine is directly used only in the fourth phase of the lifetime cycle, namely service and maintenance. Other phases are directly influencing the mode of service and maintenance. On the other hand, the fourth phase accords to the proper return information modeling the first three phases, with intetion of developing a new generation of the same machine. Machine design refers mostly to the activity started with idea and finishing with investigation of prototype. Still, action of designing exists in the fourth phase of the lifetime cycle as well, during the actions of the service and especially maintenance, because of the permanent demand for bigger or smaller modifications in construction on the several parts of machine. This is especially true for the machines of long lifetime usage, high price, produced in small series or even individually. Consequently, these machines have a lot of weaknesses that must be eliminated during the service and maintenance. Bucket wheel excavators are in this sense exceptionally specific machines. Identification of weakness is often carried out on the bases of 143

1. INTRODUCTION
Rapid expansion of global demands for electricity power has caused, among other things, much greater exploitations of lignite on the open step mines. At the same time, there has been a necessity for development of giant machinery, primary bucket wheel excavators. First excavators in Serbia started their service in the fifties of the 20-th century, and the more dynamic usage of these machines started at the end of the sixties. Today, almost thirty bucket wheel excavators are in service on the open step mines Kolubara and Kostolac. They are of German production, and they were purchased from the producers like TAKRAF, O&K, KRUPP, during the past several decades. This caused unnecessary great variety of machine designs, and made their maintenance especially complicated. In this sense, on the bases of information from the position of maintenance on open step mine, reconstruction activity of these giant machines was permanently practiced, which will be described in this article.

performances which are not in accordance with the projected, regarding the reliability, maintainability, accomplished capacity, cost of service, harmful effects on the environment, etc. Therefore, users are making an effort to upgrade these unsatisfactory performances. The upgrading is acquired with modifications of the existing machines construction, apropos the actions of redesigning and, eventually, modernization. Redesigning of a machine requires making an adequate project, which has full quality just as a project of new machine, apropos parts of new machine, and lot of specifics such as limits in technical and technological character, as well as economical, which reduces the number of possible constructive solutions. Designing for machines which are already in service actions, has its advantages as well. By observing the behavior of machines and their parts, especially their work, performances of reliability, maintainability, kinds and causes of damages, etc., we can find valuable information for actions of redesigning. It is necessary that observation is well organized and permanent, with quality information systems. Inputs are information that is attained by the methods of technical diagnostics, statistics process, on the basis of experts analyzing. Analyzing and synthesis of these information are being processed with consideration, based on the sciences such as machine design fundamentals above all, and systems sciences, experts systems, etc. Apropos, first three phases of life time cycle can be components of the fourth phase of life time cycle of a machine. In redesigning or revitalization and modernization actions, existing machine which is in the fourth phase of its lifetime cycle will continue developing conceptually. At the beginning of the life time cycle, machine starts working with more weaknesses, concerning poorly operated functions and constructive details, which can be immediately observed, and that is what we call infant mortality, fig.3. Based on the information about its early weakness, from the position of maintenance, machine slowly enters the stationary regime of working. This period is what we call normal life, and during this period machine has a low failure rate, which is constant for a period of time. The importance of redesigning actions is evident. In practice, we often call this action redesigning in maintenance. At the end of the life time, machine unavoidably enters in the period of increased failure rate. This process, which makes this three periods in lifetime of a machine, is formally presented with the bathub curve, fig.2. This curve is a maxim, and because of that it is continual. For a concert machine, it would have bigger or smaller rises and fallings, because of the redesigning concerning the rejection of weakness. It is obvious that there is a tendency of reaching stationary working condition after initial weaknesses, as well as a tendency of decrease in working capabilities. In the five phases of lifetime cycles of bucket wheel excavators, the 144

excavator actually works only in the 4th phase. Excavators failure rate generally shows performance according to the bathtub curve. The emergence of failure stationary stage with low constant failure rate is heightened. In the literature, the occurrence is usually defined as a phenomenon when number of failures on the experiential system starts being approximately constant in the time unit /2/. This rule for excavators has its limitations, and, especially, a condition that maintenance should constantly bring all the systems elements into proper state. At the same time, actions of redesigning lead to stationary stage, and potential decrease in failure rate.

Fig.2. The Bathtub Curve, Hypothetical failure rate versus time For example we can observe a diagram of ratio /4/ of time usefulness, of one of the bucket wheel excavators in Electric power industry of Serbia, fig. 3. The diagram is for bucket wheel excavator SRs 1200.24/4, produced by German manufacturer VEG Laucchammerwerk in 1968, and operated on Kolubara mines, Field D. After about 27 years of work, and more then 160 million m3 of dug materials, the excavator was cracked down.

3. TYPICALLY REDESIGNING SOLUTIONS APPLIED ON THE BUCKET WHEEL EXCAVATORS

In the last two decades, manufacturing of new bucket wheel excavators has been almost stopped. New technology, materials and cotemporary design solutions are applied during the process of redesigning, namely in the processes of revitalizations and modernizations of existing bucket wheel excavators. This process is inherent to all lignites open step mines in Europe. Typical trends of modernizations applied on the bucket wheel excavators are the following: new construction of bucket wheel, high class of materials on the intensive abrasion points, larger applications of hydraulics system, larger applications of planetary gearboxes.

0.8 coficient of time usefulness 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

years

Fig.3. Diagram of ratio of time and capacitance usefulness, for bucket wheel excavator SRs 1200.24/4 In addition, modernization contains the new solutions from area of logistics and technical diagnostics, systems of control, global positions systems, etc. Commonly used redesigning activities are the following: - on the bucket wheel construction, actions on the main shaft and drive unit, - mechanism for lifting the boom of bucket wheel, - mechanism for lifting the boom of driver, - caterpillars mechanisms and drive units, - drive units for rotation of upper structure of bucket wheel excavator, - checking and eventually strengthening of steel construction of bucket wheel, - also, change of electro equipment. Actions of revitalization on the bucket wheel excavators are subject of many scientific articles and projects in Serbian mechanical industry, and at the scientific institutions, especially regarding the theory of reliability and maintainability. The most seriously revitalization in Serbia was done on the cracked bucket wheel excavators SRs 1200 24/4, on the Field Don the Kolubara`s open step mine. Excavator was cracked down after a fire in 1995. The price of revitalization was about 7 million euros, which is about 60% of the price for a new excavator.

Fig.5. SRs 1200, after cracking, year 1995.

Fig.6. SRs 1201, after revitalization, year 2004. Excavator was renamed from 1200 to 1201. This revitalization induces next most significant actions of redesigning, regarding the upgrading of original construction of bucket wheel excavators: drive unit on the bucket wheel was substituted with a new strongest one(from 400 to 630 kW), this was magnifier cutting force and enabled digging and coal, built in new bucket wheel with one wall and new type of bearings, with this redesigning, capacity was increased from 3465 to 4100 m3/h, 145

Fig.4. SRs 1200, before cracking down

upper structure was built completely new, because an old one was destroyed completely, - the ball thrust bearing, above upper structure was redesigned, diameter of balls was exchanged from 110 to 150 mm, - original solutions were with two drive units for rotation of upper structure of bucket wheel excavator, it is applied another one drive unit, - it was put in instruments for control a force in the wire. There are a lot of parallel examples of redesigning during the period of service of bucket wheel excavators. We shall refer to some of them which are typical. On bucket wheel excavators SchRs 350, after the steel structure was damaged, joints with rivets were substituted with high quality screws. On the bucket wheel Sch Rs 700, open steps Tamnava east and Field B, changes in dynamic behavior of steel structure were realized. On the bucket wheel excavators Srs 1330 26/5, open step mine Drmno, original gear box was substituted with a light new one, and drive motor was substituted with contemporary new one having frequent regulations. Similar experiences were obtained on the open step mines in ex East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece.

REFERENCES
Books [1] TODOROVI, J., Inenjerstvo odravanja, Jugoslovensko drutvo za motore i vozila, Beograd, 1993. [2] IVKOVI, S., Otkazi elemenata rudarskih maina, Rudarsko-geoloki fakultet, Beograd, 1997 [3] IVKOVI, S., IGNJATOVI D., JOVANI P., TANASIJEVI M., Projektovanje odravanja povrinskih kopova, Rudarsko-geoloki fakultet, Beograd, STILL OUT OF PRINT Studies [4] PRODUETAK VEKA OSNOVNE OPREME NA POVRINSKIM KOPOVIMA EPS-a, Rudarsko-geoloki fakultet, Beograd, 2004. PhD thesis: [5] TANASIJEVI, M., Sigurnost funkcionisanja mehanikih komponenti rotornog bagera, Rudarskogeoloki fakultet, Beograd, STILL OUT OF PRINT

4. CONCLUSION
Today, redesigning as well as revitalization of bucket wheel excavators and other giant mining machineries is the main dealing for the users as well as the producers. There exists no demand for production of new machines since new lignite open step mines are not being open. The old bucket wheel excavators, provided that they have well preserved steel structure, can continue operating for a long time. It is necessary to constantly check the machines current technical condition, and to be informed about new developments in equipment application on excavators. Process of redressing which would eliminate weaknesses and introduce new and more modern designing solutions should be one of the basic aims of a mining company. Moreover, actions of redesigning must also be aimed at improvement of all performances of dependability and quality of service, such as reliability, maintainability and maintenance support. This is especially important regarding the high prices of mining machinerys technical systems, as well as high costs of stagnation in the process of lignite exploitation. Actions of redesigning must upgrade all performances of dependability and quality of service, such as reliability, maintainability and maintenance support.

CORRESPONDENCE
Milo TANASIJEVI, MsC. Eng. University of Belgrade Faculty of Mining and Geology Djuina 7 11000 Beograd, Serbia tan@rgf.bg.ac.yu Dragan IGNJATOVI, Prof. D.Sc. Eng.. University of Belgrade Faculty of Mining and Geology Djuina 7 11000 Beograd, Serbia gagi@rgf.bg.ac.yu

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