Development of Bit Condition Monitoring System (BCMS) for mine blasthole drilling

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The proposed application aims to further develop our recently achieved approach for tricone drill bit conditionmonitoring in mining applications. The mining industry is moving toward automation and autonomousmachinery for increasing the efficiency and precision in production. A successful automated blasthole drillingcondition monitoring and control system is a vital step forward. Drilling and blasting are two preliminary tasksin large surface mining operations and constitute more than 15% of the total costs. Tricone bits are preferred inmost rotary drilling applications for blasthole drilling in a surface mining operation. Bit wear and subsequentfailure in the drill hole creates major delays in removing the detached cone(s) from the hole to avoid damage tothe rock crusher equipment. Autonomous drilling would not be achievable without a machine-sensing systemfor recognizing when the drill bit is worn and requires replacing.In previous study extensive drilling tests were conducted in ArcelorMittal's iron ore mine in Quebec as well asTeck's Highland Valley Copper mine in British Columbia. The blasthole drill rigs were instrumented and datawere gathered. The vibration signal of a drill rig has been analyzed .The correlations between vibration signalbehavior and bit wear state has been established.The primary goal of this proposal is to design and build a Bit Condition Monitoring System (BCMS) byLaboratory as well as field tests on two typical Canadian hard-rocks and soft-rocks. This technologicaldevelopment could lead to cost saving and benefit to the Canadian mining operations. The most obviousbenefit is that this will optimize a complete usage of bit life and remove the additional costs by preventingcatastrophic failure. In addition, in the context of autonomous drilling to increase the productivity, BCMS willbecome a necessary requirement. There will also be an environmental benefit in the reduced energyconsumption due to more efficient and improved drilling technology.