Design And Optimization Research Of The Drum Cutter’s Cutting Head

As a new engineering machinery equipment，the drum cutter has been used extensively infield of building construction，tunneling and mining etc. Cutting head, as an important part of thedrum cutter, consumes most of power of the whole machine when it works. With the complicatedstructure, cutting head has many correlated and interacted assembly parameters, which have aninfluence on the cutting performance of the whole machine directly. Accordingly, the design andoptimization of the cutting head becomes the main research content in this paper.The author used the cutting head of German Erkat ER-1500drum cutter for the chiefresearch source in this paper. Based on the original data obtained by preliminary surveying andmapping, the author had studied on the layout of the milling cutters and designed out the layoutin theory first; then the author used the dynamic simulation technology, analyzed theperformance of drum cutter systematically, finally optimized the key geometric parameters suchas cutting angle and milling cutter tip’s axial gap. Further simulation results show that theperformance of cutting head got a clear improvement. The main research works andachievements in this paper as follow:(1) In order to parametric design of the cutting head, the author put each parameter into onemathematical model considered the function of them and through the method of space coordinatetransforming principle; these establish the theory basis of drum cutter’s structure design.(2) Through calculated the force when the milling cutter milled the rock, the authordetermined the load of the milling cutter in different cutting angle and crosscut speed. The authorbuilt the3D model of the milling cutter and holder by Pro/E, then leaded them intoPro/Mechanica, analyzed the stress of the milling cutter in different cutting angle and crosscutspeed. According to the result, the author chose the optimum cutting angle of milling cutter. Thismade the foundation of the cutting head design.(3) In order to analyze the performance of the drum cutter, the author did the dynamicssimulation of the drum cutter work. The author leaded the cutting head3D model into hypermeshfirst, then merged it and the rock model together, finally constructed the model of the cuttinghead longitudinal and transverse milling rock respectively. Through meshed the model, set thekey parameters, constraint, the boundary condition and solving time etc, the author exported theK files which was suitable for LS_DYNA operating. Leaded the K file intoANSYS/LS_DYNA10.0solver, the author obtained the force of the milling cutters longitudinaland transverse milling rock after operation.(4) The author studied on the key parameter—milling cutter tip’s axial gap, then obtained amore reasonable value of it. The author had done the dynamic simulation of the cutting headwhich was adjusted milling cutter tip’s axial gap. The result showed that the force difference ofevery milling cutter decreased, and the whole force of cutting head also decreased. So it was effective to make the force of cutting head more reasonable by modifying the milling cutter tip’saxial gap, thereby, it established the basis for the follow-up research of the milling cutter’sparameters.The author have done a systemic research of the milling cutter’s structure design,performance analysis and optimization from the theory model,3D entity building, dynamicssimulation and structure optimization etc. The research methods and results were not onlymaking the sense for drum cutter design, but also having a good engineering application valuefor drum cutter locally producing.