Vacuum Devices
Development responsibility:
UWA
Vacuum excavator (large capacity)
Origin of concept
Bill van Ree has described typical situations where a large capacity
vacuum cleaner could be very useful. These are partially/fully collapsed
mud houses with possibly layers of mines and rubble extending to the original
floor levels. Here, much of the demining task is simply excavating the rubble.
A large vacuum cleaner device could save much of the labour needed, and
certainly could have prevented some accidents which have recently occurred.
If the house has access, Bill would use a back-hoe excavator. If there is
no access for a large machine, this task has to be done manually with buckets
and trowels. Deminers work at a "face" excavating material from
the bottom, waiting for mines to be apparent as the face steadily recedes.
10 - 15 vacuum cleaner plants ($5000 each) would cost less than one back
hoe and might get more work done.
The houses cannot be demolished because they are the only current record
of home/land ownership in the cities.
Status (July 1997)
JPT will research large scale vacuum cleaners built in Australia.
fluids/vacuum-1-s.jpg
Vacuum prodders
Origin of concept
Observation of prodding shows that much of the time is used to remove
material from the trench being dug towards the suspect target location.
A prodder in the form of a vacuum cleaner could allow the deminer to prod
while the debris are sucked away at the same time. This would speed up work
considerably.
Several test models have been constructed and some design problems have
emerged. The main problem is to avoid clogging the vacuum cleaner hose with
larger debris.
Naturally, electric power is needed from a portable generator, or a special
engine-powered suction unit is needed.
Status (July 1997)
Suitable concept demonstrated in June 1997 by Brett McLean, though considerable
refinement is needed.
Rubble collector
This is an important component which needs care in design. The concept
is to collect most of the larger rubble and sand particles before they go
down the main vacuum hose to reduce the load on the pump and to prevent
clogging of the main hose. This can be designed so that it is easy to empty.
Boring tip
Seems to work well in harder ground conditions (video)
Excavating tip (angled end)
Works well in softer ground and sand, where it considerably speeds up
work. |
fluids/vacuum-prodder-2-s.jpg |
We would welcome collaborators to work
on related devices.
We will supply you with reports and working drawings, papers etc., provided
you agree to joint publications arising from this.
Contact
us
| Demining Home Page | | James
Trevelyan's Home Page | UWA Home page
|
For
more information on any of these send us E-mail at demining@mech.uwa.edu.au
All graphics by Demining Research
Team. Aug 1998.
Last modified: Dec 1997 by
James Trevelyan
|