Stress and wear analysis of the disc cutter of rock tunnel boring machine

Abstract

Full face rock tunnel boring machine is one of the main machineries and equipments for underground engineering, and the failure of its disc cutter is the main failure form of this machinery. In order to find out the factors of wear of disc cutters and improve the rock breaking efficiency, a lot of research has been done. In this paper, the methods of theoretical research, simulation analysis and engineering application are used. The laws of wear of disc cutters on the cutter head are researched at the process of cutting migmatitic gneiss, and its influence factors are analyzed. The results show that the wear on the edge of disc cutter is serious. The main factor for the wear of disc cutters is its stress from the rocks, and its variance is continual. And wear rate of the disc cutters is proportional to the integrality index of the rocks. With the increase of the amount of wear, the area of contact between a disc cutter and the rock gets bigger, and their extrusion strength gets lower on the contrary. These results are very helpful to the structure optimization of the disc cutter and the improvement of working efficiency.