Study on the efficiency of the digging process using the model of excavator bucket

In the first part of the paper, an experimental program is presented investigating the soil cutting problem, with the application of vertical rigid walls at various widths as the working tools. It was found that when the tool width equalled the width of the soil bin, the soil cutting problems might be treated as plane strain processes. For the tools for which no interaction with the sidewalls of the bin was observed, the zone of the plane strain deformations occurred in the central part of the tools. In the second part of this paper a new experimental program of laboratory tests is presented, for a tool model in the shape of an excavator's bucket equipped with teeth. The experimental verification of the influence of teeth (number of teeth and the position of teeth on the bucket's inside lip) on the efficiency of the digging cycle is the aim of this paper. For high values of teeth spacing, the superposition of the plane strain deformation mechanism with three-dimensional failure modes within the soil was observed. For the low values of teeth spacing, the teeth did not act as separate three-dimensional objects but as one wide tool built up from several modules. As a consequence, the deformation pattern in front of such an assembly of teeth was again the plane strain deformation pattern. (C) 2003 ISTVS. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.