The Automatic Operation's Research And Applies For Ore Stacker & Reclaimer

With the continuous development of automatic control technology and communication technology, every industry fields become more and more depended on automatic control modernization. The vehement competition of transportation markets requires the information technology to be inducted into enterprises to promote their competition ability. Through reforming the industry workflow, eligible management can be obtained. On the other hand, traditional work mode must be replaced by promoting automatic application to decreased labor cost, and improve the produce efficiency. Under such circumstances, the transportation department of Baosteel Group decides to change the manual operation of ore loading and unloading in the bulk yard of Majishan Port, and induct some automatic technology in order to realize the automatic control in the whole process of ore material loading and unloading, with which to improve the level of automatic control in Chinese ports.In present, there is no substance study and application on automatic operating of ore stacker & reclaimer in our country. There are few ore bulk yards overseas have this technology, but there is still no precedent in ore transfer port. Developing the study on this technology has big importance to fulfill the blank in the domestic transportation industry.The unmanned system of bulk material yard is a totally new technology in the bulk material transportation industry. It realize the automatic operating of the stacking/reclaiming machine of the bulk material. This article discusses how to realize the automatic operating of the stacking and reclaiming machine, by the adoption of modern advanced industrial automation, detection, mapping, computer graphics and communications technology. In this system, by using of laser scanning technology, it carries on the dynamic real-time scanning on the ore pile, and processing of simulation, building a three-dimensional images and materials information database. The system convert the operating plan about stacking and reclaiming to PLC control command automatically, then it control the stacking/reclaiming machine addressing automatically. Based on the setting data, such as pile-shape, pile width, pile height, the machine automatically stacks ore materials. Or according to the specified materials pile, it finds entry point, and then reclaims ore materials automatically.The Transportation Department of Baosteel leads research on the unmanned system of iron ore yard in project phase two of Majishan port. The project staff overcome difficulties such as no ready-made template, refine the advanced experience for ore materials operating, which summed up in Majishan these years, into a computer programming language. They successfully developed an automation control systems used in the bulk stacking and reclaiming, based on many modern advanced technologies, such as multi-sensor fusion, information processing, distributed computing, automation and network communication.The system realized the integration of management of ore yard, central control, unmanned control of stacker and reclaimer. After the central control computer releases the operating plan, the system automatically generates operating instructions according to optimized operating model, and calculate the key operating parameters according to the three-dimensional model, which generated by real-time scanning. Based on the operating parameters and the information from the multi-sensor, the bottom control system executes intelligent control and feedback, thus realizes the automatic operation of stacking and reclaiming.The system was used in October 2007, and functional assessment lasted for a period of 2 months. Still now, the system is running well, has good performance, such as stability performance, convenient operation, easy maintenance, security and efficient. Functional design specifications meet the requirements, and the results have reached user's targets, and met the business needs of user. Software development met acceptance criteria.The unmanned technology of bulk stacking and reclaiming used in yard of Majishan port, is the result of independent integration and technological innovation of Baosteel. It lay the foundation for Majishan port to became the first information, digital, intelligent bulk cargo port.