Fatigue prediction for hoist cables over sheaves in large mining shovel application |
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| Authors: | C. Wokem T. G. Joseph M. Curley |
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| Affiliation: | Faculty of Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada |
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| Abstract: | Cables are used in many engineering applications, whether considered as stationary or running cables. In the latter, ropes are subjected to repeated tension and bending as they run over a sheave wheel. Such loading scenarios are seen for large mining equipment such as draglines and shovel hoist ropes. Fretting fatigue failure often occurs after several cycles of loading because of wires rubbing against each other and external wires rubbing against sheave wheels. It is also pertinent to understand the behaviour of cables subjected to bending over sheaves, to be able to predict fretting fatigue life, so as to set preventive maintenance activities to avoid catastrophic failure in such systems. In this paper, the behaviour of 2 specific configuration strands, composing either 7 or 19 wires, bent over a sheave is investigated numerically. To aid preventive maintenance inspection, critical locations of stress concentrations are identified as a function of applied load or tensile stress. The investigation also considers the impact of groove size, diameter of sheave to diameter of cable ratio, and contact length, enabling the application to infer fatigue life. |
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| Keywords: | cable failure fatigue finite element modelling fretting fatigue hoisting maintenance mining shovel strands stress analysis |
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