Load modelling of a mobile miner

Sammanfattning: In the mining industry, finite element analysis (FEA) and experimental tests are essential for the verification of mechanical properties and for performing parametric studies. Such practices require lots of resources and, sometimes, long computational time. Therefore, there is an increased need for alternative time efficient methods with a low requirement of resources. On the other hand, simulations of multi body mechanical models is a way to achieve that. The current work investigates a structural design that is modelled as a system of rigid bodies, which is firstly derivced in Python and then simulated in Matlab. As input, structural properties from previous experimental and FEM studies were used. The aim of the project is to provide an understanding of the mechanical behaviour of the rock and the mining machine, during the cutting procedure. Parametric studies by altering the strucutral parameters of stiffness and dam,ing and by varying cutter-wheel placements provide us with several significant results. A correlation between the structural parameters and the fatique loads is observed. The influence of each individual structural parameter on the fatique loads are explicitly described. Overall, this mehodology leads to faster calculations since there is a massive decrease in the number of degrees of freedom compared to a finite element simulation, and therefore to the ability to perform extensive parametric studies.