Evaluation of electric cable shovel digging force and analysis of its trajectory in Athabasca oil sands

With a transition from continuous mining with such excavators like draglines and bucket wheel excavators to truck and shovel application in Athabasca oil sands in 1990's research interests has been grown up on improvement of the shovel productivity as well as its availability through different approaches. Some studies been done on soil behaviour and requirements to overcome on the shear strengths and material diggability. Some other focused on equipment itself and to evaluate the stresses generated during the excavation cycle and improvements in metallurgy of the parts. There is also another spectrum of research, which looks at the forces in swing, crowd and hoist. In this paper in order to evaluate the performance of Bucyrus 495H series electric cable shovel, the hoist, crowd, and swing AC motors variables has been collected and post processed to measure and evaluate the digging trajectory, cutting force and its direction.