Research Of On-line Monitoring System For The TBM Disc Cutter’s Wear Based On Ultrasonic Ranging

As the rapid development of Chinese society, the scale and demand of transportation and engineering construction are on an ever-increasing trend. The tunnel, as the construction of underground, and which has the unique advantages, also presents a growth trend. The main rock-breaking cutter of the full-face hard rock tunnel boring machine (TBM) is disc cutter, and monitoring for disc cutter’s running state and wear speed has become a main direction of the TBM research.The text introduces a kind of on-line monitoring system for the TBM disc cutter’s wear based on ultrasonic ranging. The ultrasonic sensor which installed on the back of cutterhead emits ultrasonic signal, receives the reflected signal of ultrasonic wave. The TDC-GP2 chip is used as the core of time measurement and the MSP430 microcontroller is used as the controller of entire system. With the propagation velocity of ultrasonic wave in the air. the distance can be figured out. Then the wireless transmission equipment transmits the data of distance to the operator’s cabin.Based on Visual C++.NET platform, the software for the host computer has also been written. Finally, the monitoring system has been proved of accuracy and reliability by experimental results.