Turbodrill Design and Performance Analysis

Turbodrill (turbine down hole motor) has been recently proposed by the authors as the preferred drive mechanism with high rotation speed for hard rocks drilling for deep mineral exploration applications.Turbodrill is a type of hydraulic axial turbomachinery in which turbine motor section has multistage of rotors and stators that convert the hydraulic power provided by the drilling fluid to mechanical power with diverting the fluid flow through the stator vanes to rotor vanes. This paper presents a methodology for designing multistage turbodrills with asymmetric rotor and stator blades configurations. The numerical simulation approach and the simulations results carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for the proposed small size model of turbodrill stage with different drilling fluid (mud) types and various mass flow rates are presented. As a result optimum operational parameters are proposed for gaining the required rotation speed and torque for hard rocks drilling

Fluid Flow Investigation through Small Turbodrill for Optimal Performance

Basic design methodology for a new small multistage Turbodrill (turbine down hole motor) optimized for small size Coiled Tube (CT) Turbodrilling system for deep hard rocks mineral exploration drilling is presented. Turbodrill is a type of axial turbomachinery which has multistage of stators and rotors. It converts the hydraulic power provided by the drilling fluid (pumped from surface) to mechanical power through turbine motor. For the first time, new small diameter (5-6 cm OD) water Turbodrill with high optimum rotation speed of higher than 2,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) were designed through comprehensive numerical simulation analyses. The results of numerical simulations (Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)) for turbodrill stage performance analysis with asymmetric blade’s profiles on stator and rotor, with different flow rates and rotation speeds are reported. This follows by Fluid-Structural Interaction (FSI) analyses for this small size turbodrill in which the finite element analyses of the stresses are performed based on the pressure distributions calculated from the CFD modeling. As a result, based on the sensitivity analysis, optimum operational and design parameters are proposed for gaining the required rotation speed and torque for hard rocks drilling

Performance monitoring to support the continous improvement of blast preconditioning at Cadia East, technical update

The main objective of the project is to evaluate the current detonation performance of blast preconditioning at Cadia East. This is expected to be achieved through a monitoring campaign involving a number of sensors that allow direct measurements of product performance; including in-hole density monitoring gauges, detonation pressure sensors and temperature sensors. As part of Phase 1 (Planning Phase) of this project, a site meeting with the blast preconditioning team took place at Cadia East. This visit helped identify a number of instrumentation and installation requirements. Prior to this meeting a number of pressure and temperature sensors were fabricated and taken to site to refine installation procedures

A Method To Assess And Minimise The Potential For Fume Generation From Blasting

This project was initiated in an effort to understand the mechanism for fume production in blasting operations in open cut coal mines with the view to develop a preliminary fume production risk assessment matrix based on direct measurements and product quality. The major outcomes of the project have been the development of an instrument to measure in-hole density of the explosive column, procedures to enable on-site measurement of explosive composition and a risk matrix to be used by mine sites as an aid to minimise post blast fume incidence