Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Excavator is heavy equipment used for excavating materials in the civil, construction, and mining industries. When excavating material, selecting appropriate equipment according to the required digging force is necessary. This research aims to study the required digging force for excavating the material by measuring the hydraulic pump pressure on a laboratory-scale excavator (bucket volume ± 4 liters). The test was carried out on soil and loose sand materials with several variations of the attack angle (60?, 50?, and 40?). Before the excavation test for soil and loose sand materials, calibration with a load cell is required to relate pump pressure data to the digging force. Then the data processing was carried out using the artificial neural network method, and a good correlation was found in the calibration data processing. Furthermore, in the excavation test, the pump pressure data were entered into the ANN model formed from the calibration data. The results show that the required force for excavating soil material is bigger than sand material. The digging force for excavating soil material with various attack angles (?) 60; 50; 40 are 1.81 kN; 1.71 kN; 2.05 kN. While the digging force for excavating sand material with various attack angles (?) 60; 50; 40 are 1.13 kN; 1.53 kN; 1.60 kN. The specific energy of excavation is directly proportional to the digging force, with the results showing the specific energy of excavating soil material is bigger than that of sand material. The specific for excavating soil material with various the attack angles (?) 60; 50; 40 are 0.061 MJ/m3; 0.060 MJ/m3; 0.052 MJ/m3. While the specific energy for excavating sand material with various attack angles (?) 60; 50; 40 are 0.053 MJ/m3; 0.058 MJ/m3; 0.050 MJ/m3. This research can be further developed on a field scale, so the selected types of equipment can be done better before excavation.