Liner wear in jaw crushers

Journal article, 2003

Wear in rock crushers causes great costs in the mining and aggregates industry. Change of the geometry of the crusher liners is a major reason for these costs. Being able to predict the geometry of a worn crusher will help designing the crusher liners for improved performance. A model for prediction of sliding wear was suggested by Archard in 1953. Tests have been conducted to determine the wear coefficient in Archard's model. Using a small jaw crusher, the wear of the crusher liners has been studied for different settings of the crusher. The experiments have been carried out using quartzite, known for being very abrasive. Crushing forces have been measured, and the motion of the crusher has been tracked along with the wear on the crusher liners. The test results show that the wear mechanisms are different for the fixed and moving liner. If there were no relative sliding distance between rock and liner, Archard's model would yield no wear. This is not true for rock crushing applications where wear is observed even though there is no macroscopic sliding between the rock material and the liners. For this reason, Archard's model has been modified to account for the wear induced by the local sliding of particles being crushed. The predicted worn geometry is similar to the real crusher. A cone crusher is a machine commonly used in the mining and aggregates industry. In a cone crusher, the geometry of the crushing chamber is crucial for performance. The objective of this work, where wear was studied in a jaw crusher, is to implement a model to predict the geometry of a worn cone crusher.