Process Monitoring in Heavy Duty Drilling Rigs—Data Acquisition System and Cycle Identification Algorithms

TLDR

Drilling process monitoring is widely used for rock‑mass characterization, bit‑wear assessment, and drilling performance, yet on‑board systems are installed on few rigs and are prone to failures. This work aims to develop a versatile data‑acquisition system and automatic analysis procedure applicable to multiple drilling rigs. The system combines hardware and software that measure electric current and acoustic signals, applying threshold‑based segmentation, short‑time envelope spectra, and spectral representations to identify drilling cycles. Validation on a manufacturer’s test rig showed accurate cycle detection, including pre‑boring stages, and effective use of percussion instantaneous frequency from acoustic recordings, matching on‑board monitoring data.

Abstract

The monitoring of drilling processes is a well-known topic in the mining industry. It is widely used for rock mass characterization, bit wear monitoring and drilling process assessment. However on-board monitoring systems used for this purpose are installed only on a limited number of machines, and breakdowns are possible. There is a need for a data acquisition system that can be used on different drilling rigs and for an automatic data analysis procedure. In this paper, we focused on the automatic detection of drilling cycles, presenting a simple yet reliable system to be universally installed on drilling rigs. The proposed solution covers hardware and software. It is based on the measurement of electric current and acoustic signals. The signal processing methods include threshold-based segmentation, a short-time envelope spectrum and a spectrum for the representation of results. The results of the research have been verified on a real drilling rig within the testing site of its manufacturer by comparing the results with the data of the on-board monitoring system installed on the machine. Novel aspects of our approach include the detection of the pre-boring stage, which has an intermediate amplitude that masks the real drilling cycles, and the use of the percussion instantaneous frequency, which is estimated by acoustic recordings.