South African hoisting systems with emphasis on Blair multi-rope hoists

CIM Bulletin, Vol. 88, No. 987, 1995

A.M. Girodo and E.N. Sparg, Dorbyl Heavy Engineering Vanderbijlpark, South Africa

Dorbyl Heavy Engineering has been manufacturing winders since 1949 mostly for the South African mining industry. Table 1 shows that the vast majority of winders have been double drum winders. At the greater depths with larger ropes being employed, it became apparent that multi-rope winders would be needed. The high stress variation in Koepe winder ropes at great depths especially beyond 2000 m, ruled out this possibility. Thus the original concept was borne for the Blair multi-rope winder where the stress level variations in the rope would be as per the well known, tried and tested double drum winder. The Blair multi-rope was also devised to increase payload by using multiple ropes. With the increasing costs of transporting men and material coupled with fact that orebodies are getting deeper, various feasibility studies have been carried out by South African mining houses. For this reason Dorbyl Heavy Engineering has done conceptual design work of both double drum and Blair multi-rope winders with diameters up to 8.5 m dia (still well within our manufacturing capabilities). These feasibility studies have looked at depths approaching 4000 m*. This paper covers the typical duties leading to the choice of single drum, double drum, Koepe and Blair multi-rope hoists on South

Mots Clés: Mine hoisting systems, Underground mining, South African mining.