• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.496-504
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• 2015

Roadheader that excavates ground using pick cutters installed on the cutting head is one of the partial-face machines. A conical cutter among pick cutters is excavation tool decreasing the loss of cutter using tungsten carbide insert at the tip of the cutter and it has been widely used in the roadheaders. In this study, durability performance for three kinds of conical cutters was evaluated in copper mines composed of Manto and conglomerate. After field test, the visual inspection as well as the weight loss measurement of pick cutters was carried out to investigate the damage of pick cutters. In addition, CT scan and SEM were performed to check whether or not crack and apertures in pick cutters. As results, the conical cutter with hardfacing was evaluated as having the best durability performance and it was unable to find cracks in all cutters investigated.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.49-59
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• 2019

In this study, the durability of conical pick cutter was compared and analyzed by pre- and post-test visual inspection, measurement of weight loss and wear volume through field test on two types of conical pick cutters applied to rotary drum cutter. In the visual inspection, it was found that only 9 inserts were lost in the slim type conical pick cutter. This result show that the thickness of the head cover surrounding a insert was important to maintain the insert during excavation. The weight loss and wear volume of the heavy type conical pick cutter were less than half that of the slim type. From these results, it can be confirmed that heavy type is more useful than slim type in hard rock. It should be noted that, when determining the wear loss of the conical pick cutter, the mutual comparison of the weight measurement and the wear volume measurement results may be different due to the unit weight of the material and the spalling caused by excavation.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.573-584
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• 2014

In this study, the variations of cutter acting forces depending on cutting conditions were examined to obtain basic data for roadheader cutting head design. The linear cutting tests were performed in the condition of different attack angles, penetration depths, cutter spacings by using a slim conical pick for the light cutting condition. Cutter acting forces were measured by 3-directional load cell under different test conditions, and the analysis for cutting performance were carried out after calculating average values of the measured results. It is confirmed that the optimal cutting condition for the mortar specimen is the 50 degree attack angle, the cutter spacing of 12 mm, the cutting depth of 9 mm which are obtained from the analysis results. In addition, 50 degree attack angle is more effective than 45 degree attack angle to design optimal specifications of cutting head.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.651-669
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• 2018

This study suggests the prediction model to estimate the specific energy of a pick cutter using a gene expression programming (GEP) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). Estimating the performance of mechanical excavators is of crucial importance in early design stage of tunnelling projects, and the specific energy (SE) based approach serves as a standard performance prediction procedure that is applicable to all excavation machines. The purpose of this research, is to investigate the relationship between UCS and BTS, penetration depth, cut spacing, and SE. A total of 46 full-scale linear cutting test results using pick cutters and different values of depth of cut and cut spacing on various rock types was collected from the previous study for the analysis. The Mean Squared Error (MSE) associated with the conventional Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) method is more than two times larger than the MSE generated by GEP-PSO algorithm. The $R^2$ value associated with the GEP-PSO algorithm, is about 0.13 higher than the $R^2$ associated with MLR.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.585-597
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• 2014

In this study, the cutter acting forces were measured by 3-directional load cell at two different skew angles and various S/d ratios during a series of linear cutting tests using a slim conical pick. The analysis for cutting performance were carried out after calculating average values of the measured results. The increase of penetration depth results in the decrease of specific energy. And the variations of the cutter acting forces depending on penetration depth in the case of 6 degree skew angle were smaller than in the case of 0 degree skew angle. From this results, 6 degree skew angle is more effective than 0 degree skew angle in designing optimal specifications of cutting head. In addition, $F_c/F_n$ under the setting of 6 degree skew angle was smaller than under the setting of 0 degree skew angle. However, it should be considered that the increase of cutter acting force in the cutting direction accompanied the increase of driving force in the case of the setting for 6 degree skew angle.