Cliffs Natural Resources, Northshore Mining

NORAMCO Engineering was retained to perform a physical condition review of 50 year old tandem rotary rail car dumpers located at a iron ore processing facility in Minnesota. 
Visual structural reviews were made to note areas of structural distress and corrosion.
The units were then modeled using SolidWorks® 3d CAD Software and a structural analysis was then performed with COSMOSWorks® with calculated rail car loads.
Stress levels with and without element distress were compared to allowable fatigue stresses which were in turn used as the basis for NORAMCO Engineering recommendations to the client.