Fatigue lifetime correction of structural joints of opencast mining machinery

Abstract

Opencast mining machinery represents a group of large-scale individually manufactured technical objects operated with long-life requests. Since their manufacturers are obliged to provide product that will reach declared time of life, fatigue strength and durability conditions have to be taken into account for superstructures to meet the requirements. The paper highlights main problems occurring while assessing fatigue lifetime during design. Firstly, the short survey of current state of the art regarding the approach to this problem is pre-sented. Secondly, the most important reasons of unsatisfactory accuracy of the assessments are discussed. As a main objective of the study, the authors introduce the unique method of continuous fatigue lifetime correction for the welded superstructures during the machine lifecycle, as a remedy for this group of machinery. Furthermore, results and experience from adapting the approach in real object are presented, including fatigue lifetime correction due to the real intensity of loading acquired from a bucket-wheel excavator during its long-lasting operation. It is expected that proposed procedure can help to improve credibility of fatigue lifetime assessment of heavy earthmoving machinery.