Wear and flow rate problems on chutes in a rock crushing plant

Rock crushing plants cannot afford unforeseen breakdowns with the current boom in the construction sector. This paper discusses measures that can be used to predict wear on chutes in the plant so that predictive maintenance can be implemented. Some of the chutes used to transfer the materials are difficult to access. Failures of the chutes cause downtimes, which are untimely and costly. The objective of this research is to determine the wear rates of chutes. A chute system was designed, modelled and validated using the Solidworks® software and then imported into the EDEM® software to predict the failure of the chutes. Factors affecting the abrasion wear of the metal were determined and used as input parameters to perform a simulation on EDEM® to validate the wear recorded. The service life obtained for mild steel S275 was 731 hours and that of abrasion resistant steel Hardox® 400 was 1490 hours, and it was deduced that the difference in the value of hardness of the metals to that of the rocks they carry significantly affects the wear of the chutes. The software was also used to replicate the flow of boulders on chutes and an accelerated flow rate of 496 tons per hour (t/h) was achieved at an angle of elevation of 24.4°.