April 20, 2022 6 min read
Need to dig deeper for productivity? Mining and materials company LKAB uses Hardox® 600 to get better wear resistance and longer service in extreme environments.
As a major iron ore and mineral mining company, LKAB can’t afford any loss in productivity. Unscheduled downtime can severely impact throughput and, in turn, financial performance. When LKAB started to experience too many unplanned shutdowns – and unwanted associated costs – they turned to SSAB. They knew that one factor they could control in their operations was the quality of the material in their mining equipment. They understood that the material choice for their skips and chutes would have a crucial impact on their entire operations.
LKAB’s experience with Hardox® wear plate goes back several years. But recently, the company’s requirements for service life and more advanced solutions became more acute. They needed to unload higher volumes at LKAB’s biggest harbor in Narvik, Norway, which led to increased wear and fewer opportunities to perform maintenance. At the Narvik harbor, LKAB handles nearly 30 million tonnes of iron ore each year. The harbor is ice-free year round, and deep enough to accommodate ocean-going vessels.
That’s when Hardox® 600 stepped in to handle the demands created by increased wear and longer maintenance intervals. Hardox® 600 can withstand high impact, abrasion and pressure, making it ideal for extreme wear conditions. Hardox® 600 can still be easily cut and welded, making it a great choice for high-performance applications. And it is extremely hard – not just on the surface, but throughout its entire thickness down to the core. This means that wear will not vary over time. “What we were looking for was a material which could maintain a uniform quality over a long service life,” says Evert Nilsfors from LKAB in Norway. “Hardox® 600 has proved it can meet all our strictest requirements.”
The company decided to conduct a performance optimization project with SSAB. In mines, lifting massive volumes of material and withstanding the pummeling of hard or sharp rock puts nearly any machine under immense strain. Mining skips and transport equipment must be extremely rugged to maintain productivity. Also, the skip has to be designed to carry large, heavy loads without being too heavy itself. So, what materials are best for the job? Aluminum is commonly used because of its excellent strength to weight ratio. But it simply can’t take the heavy wear and tear. That’s why LKAB lined its skips with a high-strength AR steel, Hardox® 600.
But LKAB didn’t just want a hard-wearing material. They wanted the entire solution to be as cost-effective as possible. How did they achieve this?
Wear is rarely evenly distributed in an application. Instead, there are areas of heavier wear in which thicker plate needs to be used. On the other hand, there is no point using thicker material in low-wear areas.
Through a careful analysis of drawings and flows, an optimum solution for the whole mine chute was designed. The result? All parts of the chute have the same service life, with maximum benefit from the wear-resistant steel.
“Previously, shutdowns were unplanned, and that increased costs,” Nilsfors concludes. “It’s been a huge benefit that we can now plan our maintenance.”
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