Dynamics of a single-bucket excavator on a deformable soil foundation during the digging of ground

In the paper, the dynamics of a spatial model of a single-bucket excavator on a caterpillar chassis is discussed, the strain of the soil foundation being taken into consideration. It has been assumed that the excavator is resting on a soil foundation expressed as a Kelvin-Voight viscoelastic body carrying loads distributed on the surface of interaction of the caterpillar and the ground. The excavator is treated as a system of appropriately inter-connected rigid solids, in which individual masses correspond to the basic component elements of the excavator. For the dynamic description Lagrange second-order equations have been used. The generalized coordinates assumed enable one to make a dynamic analysis of working movements of the excavator during excavation for any position of the jib with respect to the chassis and any combination of movements of the bucket and the arm. The system of differential equations obtained has been solved numerically, for numerical data corresponding to a single-bucket excavator of its bucket capacity of 1.10 m(3). The results are shown in the diagrams. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.