Client

TRF Limited,
Jamshedpur

Industry

Bulk Material Handling
Equipment

Challenge

Stacker Reclaimers are very large industrial machines – a typical machine might be 15 metres tall, 3 metres wide, and a boom spanning up to 40 metres. The boom would be kept balanced by a counterbalance exactly opposite to it, consisting of a steel frame in which multiple concrete counterweight masses were inserted.

 

TRF manufactured these machines for mines, ports, steel plants, and thermal power plants, all places where huge heaps of coal or ore required to be temporarily stored (this part of the machine is called stacker) before being loaded to the conveyor for transport or smelting (this is the reclaiming part). TRF’s technology originated from a now defunct German company, and it required the exact counterbalance weight to be decided after erecting the equipment at site, by the erection and commissioning team, through a series of trials. The problem was, this trial and error method of determining the counterbalance took several days. A cyclone / storm occurring and hitting an incompletely counterbalanced Stacker resulted in a capsized machine (At a steel plant, 2012), and even more dangerously, an improperly counterbalanced stacker reclaimer capsized while working, potentially risking loss of human life, in a Thermal Power Plant, in 2013. TRF approached Timetooth for a long term solution.

Service Area

Safety by design

Timeline

2012 - 2014
(multiple projects)

After this project implementation, designers, not field engineers, determined the counter-balance weights, commissioning work time reduced by two thirds, and capsizing machines became part of “old time stories”.

Engineering Design Analysis

1. A series of simulations were carried out when the reclaiming bucket wheel at the end of the boom was in operation.

2. Cutting loads were all modelled and simulated accurately.

3. Counterweights were carefully optimised to assure lifelong, trouble free running.

Solutions

Simulation driven design: A series of simulations were carried out, including the response to storm (wind loads), earthquake (seismic loads) and the loads and reactions created when the reclaiming bucket wheel at the end of the boom was in operation (Cutting loads) were all modelled and simulated accurately to determine the situations where the reaction forces in the wheels became dangerously low (zero reaction is imminent overturning). Thereafter, the counterweights were carefully optimised to assure lifelong, trouble free running. After this project implementation, designers, not field engineers, determined the counterbalance weights, commissioning work time reduced by two thirds, and capsizing machines became part of “old time stories”.

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