Determination of excavator type according to rock and excavator characteristics in soft formations that can be excavated directly

Characteristics of the rock mass and the excavators affect the excavatability considerably. Many researchers have previously carried out the studies suggesting suitable excavator types according to rock mass characteristics. However, they didn’t use much the excavator characteristics in this study. Many new excavators are manufactured today with developing technology and this situation makes difficult the utilization of the excavator type proposed according to rock excavatability methods developed previously. Also, since the excavator type is proposed only according to rock mass characteristics in developed rock excavatability methods, mining enterprises cannot use the excavator type according to their production capacity but use only proposed excavator type. In this study, two relations were developed, predicting maximum power reached by the excavator during the excavation and working capacities according to uniaxial compressive strength values of the rock and the bucket volume of the excavator by using two flat bucket electric excavators with different bucket volumes and powers in five different sites with a soft formation and doesn’t contain a discontinuity characteristics. Later, these developed relations were used for predicting maximum power and working capacities reached by two pieces of backhoe type hydraulic excavators with different bucket volumes and powers.