Numerical analysis of stresses in mine excavator bucket

Abstract

Excavator plays a vital role in mining industry and bucket is one of its most important components as failure of excavator bucket causes loss of production. In this paper, static analysis of excavator bucket (Tata JD 315SJ Model 2006) made of Hardox 400 alloy has been done. A solid model has been developed in CATIA V5 R18 Software by considering actual dimension of the bucket. The analysis of the model has been done by ANSYS WORKBENCH 14.0 Software. Static analysis of bucket has been done by assuming bush as a fixed component and load is applied on the teeth. Meshing of bucket is done with fine mesh with element size 0.15 to get more accurate result. Finite element analysis of bucket is done to find out equivalent von misses stress and equivalent von Mises strain acting on the bucket. Total deformation and directional deformation is also calculated by finite element method. Maximum stress developed and section prone to early failure is found out by this analysis. Results state that equivalent von Mises stress value is less than yield stress of material.