Wire Cutting Accidents
6 pages
Diamond wire cutting: failure modes, risks for safety and workers’ protection
G. Tantussi & M. Lanzetta
Department of Mechanical, Nuclear and Production Engineering – University of Pisa, Italy
S. Gentile & G. Depperu
GDTech snc – Pisa
ABSTRACT: Despite the fast development and diffusion of diamond wire cutting, the intrinsic risk of death caused by the ejection of diamond beads in case of wire breakage is still an open problem. This project, sponsored by Italian Carrara manufacturers, aims to evaluate and improve the safety of diamond wire saw machines. This paper describes the phenomena occurring immediately after wire breakage during squaring operations of marble blocks. The results of a systematic series of full-scale experiments with provoked breakage and of laboratory wire testing are provided. Over 30 experiments have been documented by high-speed imaging and analyzed in two conditions: without protections, to examine the behaviour of a free diamond wire (which has been also simulated by a numerical model) and with various protection equipments, to assess their effectiveness in eliminating all or at least drastically reducing risks for workers. 1
INTRODUCTION The introduction of diamond wire cutting in the early eighties has produced a tremendous increase of productivity in quarrying (Tantussi, Lanzetta & Romoli 2003). Unfortunately, this new extraction method has also caused a crucial increase of risks for workers. Risks are due to the presence of a diamond wire looped partly around the drive pulley of the wire saw machine and in a kerf in the material to be cut. The wire loop itself, up to tens of meters long, runs at high speed, up to 40 m/s, and presents a risk of contact for workers. A much higher threat is represented by the wire breakage (Chaplin 1995, Huang & Xu 2006), for the projection of its active elements (diamond beads) and parts (springs and/or spacers) that are closer to the broken ends. In some conditions, they can reach very high speeds, higher than the speed of sound, causing even risk of death, also for workers at tens of meters of distance from the cutting machine. To reduce risk factors, machine and diamond wire manufacturers from the Italian leading Massa-Carrara stone district have pointed out restricted
X C B A
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T
1
T
0
T
1
T
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optional idle deflection pulleys fixed protection Kevlar ribbon mobile protection stone block diamond wire wire saw machine drive pulley rail system pulley cover
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C’
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B’
Figure 1 Configuration of the wire saw machine, forces in diamond wire cutting and protection equipment: drive pulley cover, fixed and mobile protections.
areas around the machine, and propose the adoption of fixed and mobile protections on the machine and over the wire loop (Figure 1). This work has been sponsored by a Consortium of manufacturers from the same district in order to understand the phenomena occurring immediately after the wire breakage and to assess the effectiveness of current protection measures. 2
PROBLEM STATEMENT Modelling the “whip cracking” effect, which occurs after breakage to an elastically tensioned wire free to deform in space, has been approached by various researchers (Goriely & McMillen 2002, Torkar & Arzensek 2002). This work examines with an eminently experimental approach, the specific case of diamond wire breakage in order to consider the element ejection problem too. In this initial work, the common case of vertical cutting in block squaring is examined. The sense of rotation is the one generally used in quarry, with the machine pulling the top wire segment. Tests have been carried out in a closed environment with screens and protections for the investigators’ and equipments safety against the projected elements. Two series of tests have been carried out respectively with and without various protection equipments, to assess their performance and to measure the wire path (due to the whip cracking effect). Both traditional and gummed wire have been used. With the former, beads and spacers are free to rotate about the steel rope, while pressers generally positioned at intervals of five diamond beads, limit the number of projected elements in case of breakage. With the latter, beads are locked and spaced by high-pressure injected resin. 3
MODELLING OF DIAMOND WIRE CUTTING Based on the analysis of the forces involved, according to the belt transmission theory, breakage may occur mainly in three segments (Tantussi 2008) shown in Figure 1: 1.
inside the block (segment C’-X); 2.
in the upper tighter segment between block and pulley (X-B); 3.
over the pulley (B- B’). 4
EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS The acquisition system used to monitor breakage tests is based on three cameras positioned in order to allow a complete view of the wire. High-speed imaging is required because phenomena occur in a fraction of a second. A high-speed camera (1280x1024@240 Hz) is positioned perpendicularly to the cutting plane, viewing the area in the back of the machine as in Figure 2. Two high-resolution (1024x768@60 Hz) digital matrix monochrome cameras have also been used. One of them is positioned with a view from the top to detect the wire motion out of the cutting plane, if any. Two 55 kW commercial cutting machines from different manufacturers have been used. Both are driven with inverter to adjust the cutting speed and the moving back speed (to keep the wire tension constant). A current limiter set at 120 A stops the machine to limit the wire tension. At machine setup, the diamond wire is looped over the drive pulley and the block, and the two wire ends are clamped. The mechanical properties of both the steel rope and of the (cupper or steel) end clamps have been measured by laboratory tensile tests and are reported in Table 1. The rope and clamp resistance is two to eight times higher than that, which can be exerted by the machine before the intervention of the current limiter. To provoke the loop opening during cutting, two methods have been experimented: 1.
weakening the wire rope by cutting some of the strands; 2.
clamping the loop ends with a lower load than the nominal one. The first method has been quickly abandoned because it required cutting almost all the external strands and successive breakage did not occur as a clean cut but as unthreading of the central strands from the clamp. The second method has produced some dispersion of the breakage tension values caused by the dispersion in the weakened (manual) clamping load, as shown in Table 1. 5
RESULTS Over 30 full-scale experiments are documented in detail in (Tantussi 2008). Breakage occurred in all cases in the segments with the highest tension, as predicted in § 3. The most significant cases are discussed here. In figures, the wire is enhanced in red.
5.1
Path of a free diamond wire
The example shown in Figure 2 represents a significant phenomenon occurred in the same way during 11 breakage tests under the same conditions. With reference to Figure 2, immediately after the breakage, the tension T
1
in the upper segment drops to zero, while the potential elastic energy released accelerates that wire segment in the right direction. An energy balance has been estimated using experimental parameters (tensile tests reported in Table 1 for T
1
), the traction of the machine calculated from the absorbed current, and the belt transmission theory for the trend of T
1
on the segments C-X and B-A. This analysis has shown that the kinetic energy is about twenty times higher than the potential elastic energy produced by the wire tension. This latter is estimated as about 2800 N from Table 1. The wire detaching from the pulley cancels the friction that produces the wire traction. The lower wire segment stays in touch with the pulley in the tangency point A of Figure 1. It remains under strain because of the unthreading resistance exerted by the part of wire trapped within the block on one side, and by the traction exerted by the upper wire segment continuing to move towards the right, along the original trajectory. The limited wire flexibility and its displacement towards the right (
3
1
. From the observation of the top camera and for the absence of forces in the transverse direction, motion takes place mostly in the cutting plane. The wire segment between the breakage point and the U-shaped curve gets progressively shorter (
2
to
5
) and the free end increases its speed. When the length of this wire segment becomes zero, the whip cracking effect takes place: the curved segment pivots extremely fast about the lowest point of the U-shaped curve, the wire stretches completely and the curved segment finally completes its pivoting toward the bottom, hitting the floor (
7
to
9
). During pivoting, the elements closest to the free end that are not perfectly secured to the wire are projected “fanwise” at high speed.
Figure 2 High-speed images. A typical example of free (without protections) diamond wire path after (provoked) breakage between block and drive pulley. Table 1. Results of laboratory tensile tests on rope samples of 493 mm. Ultimate or Maximum unthreading load [N] elongation [mm] Weakened cupper clamp 3207 3069 2194 2804 4272 6.0 6.5 3.7 5.3 6.3 Normal cupper clamp 4529 4704 4827 4776 4199 6.8 8.7 6.8 8.5 4.9 Normal steel clamp 10192 10246 7.0 6.1 Rope without clamp 19287 19389 17.1 18.4
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