A OPEN PIT MINING AÇIK OCAK MADENCİLİĞİ

23 rd
Electric Drive Mining Class Wheel Loaders as Primary
Production Tools
A. Wood
Institution of Engineering and Technology, UK
ABSTRACT Mechanical wheel loaders are traditionally considered as support equipment,
back up to excavators and utilized as “clean up” equipment. This paper discusses the benefits
of employing large Electric Drive, Mining Class, Wheel Loaders as opposed to hydraulic
excavators in high production low cost mining operations, and the differentiation between
Electric Drive Wheel Loaders and Mechanical Drive Wheel Loaders. Large Electric Drive
Wheel Loaders, with bucket capacities up to 56m³ and payloads of 72 Tonnes, combined with
fuel saving Electric Power Regeneration technology, demonstrate competitive advantages
against hydraulic excavators in availability, production and more importantly Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO). Electric Drive Wheel Loaders have been available for over forty years, and
the fuel saving technology developed for this class of wheel loader is now utilized in other
mine site vehicles such as haul trucks. This paper compares design features, productivity,
operational costs, maintenance issues and applications.
1 WHEEL LOADER DESIGN
1.1 Mechanical Drive Wheel Loaders
Mechanical drive wheel loaders are found in
many applications and sizes up to the
CAT994, (35 Tonne Payload), and Komatsu
WA1200 (38 Tonne Payload). (Anon 2012)
These larger classes of wheel loaders are a
familiar and much used support equipment
for mine sites, assisting in everything from
infrastructure development to back up
production.
Figure 1. CAT994 35 Tonne Mechanical
Drive Wheel Loader.
Figure 2. Komatsu WA1200 36 Tonne
Mechanical drive Wheel Loader
All main functions of propel, steering and
load/unload cycles are powered directly from
3