High-Precision Simulator for Hydraulic Percussion Rock Drills

Abstract

This article summarizes the authors’ studies on a high-precision simulator for hydraulic percussion rock drills, which received a technical award from the Japanese Society for Rock Mechanics in the fiscal year of 2016. Hydraulic percussion rock drills are widely used for blast hole drilling in mines, quarries, and tunnel construction sites. The performance and efficiency of rock drills affect the time and expense necessary for rock excavation, and therefore advancement in rock drills has been required. The design and development of rock drills based on experimental results require much time and effort. Alternatively, computer simulation is an effective method, but the computational models in previous studies were too simple to implement recent rock drill mechanisms. In a series of studies by the authors, precise computational models for stress wave propagation, bit penetration into rock, and the behavior of a rock drill body were proposed based on experimental results. A high-precision simulator for hydraulic percussion rock drills was then constructed by combining the proposed component models. The simulator was able to precisely reproduce consecutive percussive drilling into granite with a rock drill.