Noise analysis of heavy earth moving machinery deployed in opencast mines and development of suitable maintenance guidelines for its attenuation - Part 1

Abstract

Worldwide, increasingly stringent regulations are coming into force, limiting the exposure of workers to industrial noise. Industrial noise and its consequences is thus growing in importance to employers, local and central government officials, trade unions, occupational hygienists and physicians and insurers. India is not an exception for this. The mining industry in India is facing serious problem of noise due to increasing demand for minerals for which large capacity machines are being deployed producing high noise levels. To know the status and to control the noise, the S&T Department of the Ministry of Coal, Government of India sponsored a research project in the area of noise pollution and its control for opencast projects. To start with, a detailed literature survey was carried out in the area of noise pollution and its control in the mining industry, embracing equipment like from Heavy Earth Moving Machinery (HEMM), compressors, workshops, pneumatic drills, processing plants etc., to know the quantum of work done in India and worldwide. The various aspects studied in this project were the daily noise dose and/or noise exposure level of the operators of various types of heavy earth moving machinery and its assessment, noise characteristics at different operating conditions of the machine, analysis of noise coming out from different parts of the machine, analysis of noise at different distances from the machine for different frequency components and the most important one i e, impact of periodic maintenance on the noise characteristics of machines and to find out with which maintenance schedule there is maximum fluctuation in the noise level and to evolve a technique for attenuating the noise generated from these machines as well as to reduce the operator's exposure to high noise levels. This paper highlights the results of this research project.