Optimization design studies for construction and mining equipment by technology convergence

The study introduces two optimization design cases for construction and mining equipments. One is the optimization of button design on a drill bit face of rock drill machine; the other is the design study of pick cutter arrangement on the cutting head of a roadheader. Rock drilling machines are commonly used for surface drilling, tunnel excavation, and underground mining. Drill-bit buttons need to be designed to increase the rock drilling efficiency. The optimal button arrangement of a drill bit and its operating condition were proposed to improve the drilling efficiency. A new evaluation method of the button arrangement that utilizes the superimposed impact area, the blank area and the moment as quantitative indices is introduced to evaluate an effect of button impacts on the rock surface. Pick cutters are core tools for roadheaders, as they directly indent and fragment the rock and minerals. A lab-scale linear cutting machine was manufactured to investigate the rock-cutting mechanism and a range of design factors: such as attack angle, skew angle, and pick spacing with cutting depth. Eventually, we proposed design conditions for the cutting head to achieve efficient rock cutting with minimized specific energy.