During excavation, the drive assembly of the bucket wheel of a bucket-wheel excavator is exposed to active and reactive forces. These forces often have adverse effects on the drive assembly, especially if the system has not been adequately sized (poor geometry) and if loads are not properly introduced into the supports (proper positioning of supports). The design of certain drive assemblies includes a torque arm, whose role is to protect the drive assembly from reactive forces. In other words, the torque arm needs to introduce reactive forces into a very stiff system via a support (in the present case the boom of the bucket wheel). Following installation of the new bucket wheel drive on excavator SRs1300.26/5+VR, vibrations were measured at characteristic points to validate the numerical model. Special attention was devoted to the dynamic performance of the torque arm because it is a potential source of failure. The optimization/validation of the bucket wheel torque arm of excavator, aimed at extending the life cycle of both the drive assembly and its components, is discussed in the paper
