Evaluation of Models and Optimisation Methods for Energy Minimisation of Drill Riggs

Abstract: There are many benefits from using electrical powertrains over diesel powertrains within the mining industries, where some of these benefits come from reducing the pollution within the mines and therefore improve the working environment as well as reduce the ventilation costs required from ventilating these pollution. It is also desired to optimise the use of the vehicle to increase the efficiency and reduce fuel consumption of the vehicle. This thesis models a boomer, a face drilling rig for underground mining, from Epiroc as well as provides optimisation methods that can be used to both optimise the model parameters to match the physical machine as well as optimise the use of the vehicle. The optimisation methods used within this thesis is non-linear programming by quadratic lagrangian optimisation, genetic algorithm optimisation as well as deterministic dynamic programming optimisation. The results shows that with the use of these optimisation methods, models can be created to accurately be matched to a physical machine. Furthermore, vehicle component optimisation and speed optimisation can be done to lower the consumed energy as well as increase the system efficiency.