Mining machinery such as draglines, electric shovels, and haul trucks are massively expensive pieces of equipment, and the costs associated with downtime are even more significant. When cracks are detected, the immediate question from production is, ‘Can we keep operating?’
That’s where our team at CMP Engineers can help. We have been analysing and solving mechanical and structural failures since 1989.
While our services span everything from mechanical design and testing to accident investigation and specialised vehicle and equipment development, one particularly critical area of our work is failure analysis and fracture mechanics – the art and science of understanding how and why equipment breaks, and how to stop it from happening again.
Our experience and capability at CMP Engineers span a wide variety of equipment, including mining draglines, truck-mounted cranes, and vibrating screens. Much of this equipment is subjected to dynamic loading, and consequently, fatigue cracking is a common problem. Our role is to investigate the cause of the cracking and, in some cases, total failures, discover what has gone wrong, and propose permanent or long-term solutions.
Although our reports may appear long and technical, they are written to be easily understood by site engineers and maintenance personnel. The recommendations at the end may be the result of weeks of analysis and testing, but they could get a multi-million-dollar machine back up and running and save a mine many thousands of dollars a day in lost production.
For industry professionals maintaining equipment or responsible for plant and machinery that has been found by inspection to have a defect or crack, failure analysis and fracture mechanics are powerful tools in our arsenal for determining the fitness-for-service of a component or structure.
Can that cracked component continue working for another week? Another year? Or does it need to be shut down now? We can give our clients a technical risk assessment. From there, it’s often a question of economics.
In one recent case, CMP Engineers was called in to assess a 40-year-old structure on a mining dragline. The mine was regularly welding up small to medium fatigue cracks, but was it still safe to keep doing that? The conclusion: yes, for now. With proper repairs and ongoing risk management, the structure could remain in service. However, the cost of continued patch-ups would eventually outweigh the cost of replacement – a call the client will have to make.
In another example, the client wanted to determine if it was safe to lower the boom after cracking was found in the spiders of the winder drums, which carry the rope loads during the lowering procedure. After comparing the loads during lowering with those in normal operation with a full bucket, it was established, using fracture mechanics principles, that it would be safe to lower the boom. This recommendation was given on the proviso that the work would not be done when the material toughness was reduced by abnormally cold temperatures.
While this article specifically examines failure analysis and fracture mechanics, our capabilities at CMP Engineers go well beyond diagnosing problems. Our work often involves innovative solutions to complex, high-risk engineering problems, backed by a deep technical skill set and the latest software tools.
We also offer in-house manufacturing through our sister company, Loadquip, and deliver tailored training through our Making Metal Work course, sharing decades of knowledge with maintenance crews, project engineers, and tradespeople about how to prevent failures in the first place.
There aren’t many mechanical engineering consultancies in Australia that have this level of technical capability. It would be great if more professionals in our traditional industries knew that CMP Engineers is just a phone call away if something’s not right. Our work can save businesses a lot of time and money in both machine downtime and safety improvements.
In other words, if your machine has a crack, don’t just reach for the welder. Reach for the phone and call CMP Engineers. We’re here to help you and keep your equipment running safely.
Contact our team today on +61 7 3839 2045 or visit www.cmpeng.com.au for more information.