DRUG BIT CUTTING TRACE IMAGE COLOURS AND CUTTING FORCE FLUCTUATION RELATION

Rock cutting is developing area in mining and tunnelling sectors. In order to open an excavation inside or surface of the rock masses, they should be dig up to obtain required engineered volume. Beside the conventional blasting methods result in total breakage of the selected parts of rock masses, rock cutting machineries are used in some engineering projects which they have cutting bits to trim the rock masses into small chips. Drag bits, as a type, is one of the bit kinds which researchers have analysed for its design parameters for different rock masses. When rock bit cutting performances are under consideration, laboratory cutting tests are performed and rocks are cut with different bit profilesto evaluate its design parameters. In these researches cutting traces have mostly been photographed for test file data. It was realised here in this research and analyzed some of these images for their colour properties. Different coloured sectors were determined along the selected cutting trace images which were compared also with the cutting force records of the related cutting tests. The colour distribution and colour difference areas of the trace images were then analysed with the cutting actions and rock mass features. The resultant enhanced coloured images and cutting forces fluctuation data obtained during cutting tests of drag bits showed that colour analysed can also be the indicators of cutting performance if they are carefully appraised.