Experimental study on rock cutting with cutter teeth of cutter suction dredger

Abstract

Cutter suction dredger is one of the ship types widely used in dredging engineering, especially for rock dredging, this ship type has more obvious advantages. Compared with dredging of sediment, rock excavation requires higher performance of cutterhead. Therefore, the determination of cutting force and the research of excavation effect in the process of cutting rock with cutter teeth have important guiding significance for the design of cutterhead and dredging construction. In view of the heterogeneity of natural rock material, complex internal mechanical properties and poor regularity and repeatability of tests, concrete samples were innovatively prepared to replace natural rock samples. A large scale model test platform was used to test the linear cutting of rock by cutter teeth. The cutting resistance of cutter teeth and the groove shape of the rock sample under different cutting angles and cutting depths were compared and analyzed. The test results show that in the process of rock cutting, cutting resistance of cutter teeth varied linearly with cutting depth, but the regularity was not obvious when cutting depth was small. The dimensionless cutting specific energy (SEQ) decreased with the increase of cutting depth, and it decreased rapidly when the cutting depth was small; when the cutting depth reached a certain value, SEQ basically did not change. The cutting width increased with the increase of cutting depth while they were linearly correlated, and the fitting curves under different cutting angles were basically the same.