Performance monitoring of electric cable shovels

Abstract

A shovel performance monitoring study at an oil sands mine used current and voltage data from hoist, crowd and swing motors of P&H 4100 series electric cable shovels. The goal was to identify key shovel performance indicators using only data from the motors. It was found that hoist and crowd motor responses can be used to identify different shovel activities, especially the dig cycle. Some key shovel performance indicators examined are the dig cycle time, digging energy and digging power. By averaging the hoist power over a number of dig cycles, the average hoist power is less sensitive to digging trajectory and could be a useful parameter for assessing ground diggability characteristics. Analysis of performance indicators showed that the shovel performance can be significantly influenced by the operator. The study revealed that freezing temperatures can have a minor and localized influence on shovel performance.