Hybrid dynamic modeling of shearer's drum driving system and the influence of housing topological optimization on the dynamic characteristics of gears

Abstract

The drum shearer is one of the main equipments of the long-wall mining system that has been widely used in coal mining for decades. Influenced by large fluctuation and intensive impact of drum load, the drum driving system is a weak part of the drum shearer due to the large dynamic deformation on ranging arm housing and the changes of gear meshing state. Since previous studies did not consider the coupling effects of housing and gearing transmission system, this study is concerned with hybrid finite element/lumped parameter dynamic modeling of the housing-transmission coupled system. In order to model the drum driving system, it is subdivided into two substructures: housing and transmission system. The housing is modeled by finite element method while the transmission system is modeled by lumped parameter method. The dynamic sub-structuring method (DSM) is used to develop a hybrid dynamic model, taking elastic coupling between the housing and transmission system into consideration. Then the influence of housing topological optimization on the dynamic characteristics of drum driving system is also analyzed through the hybrid dynamic model. The housing topological optimization is conducted through the Optistruct solver in Hypermesh, aiming at increasing the natural frequency of housing. It can be concluded that the ranging arm housing topological optimization could reduce the dynamic deformation of the housing and thus also reduce the equivalent mesh misalignment. However, the influence of housing topological optimization on the dynamic meshing force is not very significant.

Keywords

• drum shearer
• gear transmission system
• craig method
• dynamic sub-structuring method
• topological optimization