TITLE:
The Effect of the Operational Parameters on the Draft Requirement of Ripping in a Sandy Clay Soil
AUTHORS:
John Ndisya, Ayub Gitau, Duncan Mbuge, Angela Hiuhu
KEYWORDS:
Draft Requirement, Discrete Element Method, Numerical Simulation, Specific Draft, Ripping Depth, Operational Speed
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Optimization,
Vol.5 No.1,
March
3,
2016
ABSTRACT: This study set out to investigate the effect of
operational parameters (i.e. ripping
depth and operational speed) during a ripping operation on the draft
requirement during ripping in a sandy-clay soil. Field experiments, laboratory
tests and numerical modelling techniques were utilised to observe how the draft
force varied with changing values of the operational parameters. The discrete
element method in the EDEM AcademicTM software platform was employed to model
the soil en-masse to obtain a virtual experimentation platform on which different
treatments combing different settings of the operational parameters were
investigated. Statistical methods, including ANOVA, regression analysis and the
student t-test were applied to establish the significance of the effect of the
operational parameters on the draft requirement; statistical analysis revealed
that the draft increased linearly with the ripping depth
and operating speed suggesting that they are directly proportional. Lower
values of the ripping depth and operating speed were found to give the minimum
amount of the draft requirement.