Open Cut » Maintenance & Equipment
The purpose of this project was to identify risks of operating and changing large pneumatic tyres and controls that have been implemented to improve safety, and to review the state of the art of existing wheels and future wheel developments.
The literature showed that OTR wheels used for heavy vehicles in mining applications almost exclusively use the multi-piece wheel design which allows for the replacement of large tyres and has small space requirements. Multi-piece wheels currently used in OTR applications have shown evidence of failing to contain the compressed gas of OTR tyres, with some failures being linked to the lock ring concept.
From literature and reviewed data, it was determined that rim failure or inadvertent disassembly of multipiece OTR wheels resulted in injuries that were significant in 41% of incidents and fatal in 44% of incidents, in the period between 1980 to 2015. Data provided by RSHQ (from 2007 to 2022) was analysed and found to be in agreeance with the published literature, finding that 33% of fatal incidents were caused by inadvertent disassembly. The remaining fatal incidents were found to be caused by uncontrolled release of tyre pressure and falling parts.
Most significant incidents were found to be directly related to tyre handling and fitting procedures, where fitters are within close proximity to the hazards including pressurised gas, falling parts and crush or pinch hazards. Falling parts hazards were found to be a leading cause of serious accidents due to the vertical mounting procedures of multi-piece wheels. High potential incidents were found to include the same hazards, but occurred away from personnel, resulting in a near miss.
A review of key wheel failure incidents identified a series causal factors which are described in the report.
A review of technologies developed to address the hazards of multi-piece wheels found that most design concepts will either apply a modification to the lockring style multi-piece wheel, or replace the pneumatic tyre with an airless wheel.