About the Design Aids
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgement

The author, for the last about more than four decades, has been engaged in designing, testing and design review of machine foundations for a variety of industrial plants viz. Petrochemicals, Refineries, Power, and Cement Plants. He has accumulated a huge amount of vibration test data on variety of machines and their foundations and established good correlations of foundation design with machine performance and has shared all this in the form of a book “Foundations for Industrial Machines - Handbook for Practising Engineers” first published in 2008 & 2nd edition in 2011, which, focuses on the improvements needed in the design process for achieving satisfactory machine performance with the sole objective of making practising engineers physically understand and feel the dynamics of foundations for Industrial Machines.

This book, “Foundations for Industrial Crushing Mills” is written in the form of Design Aids primarily for practising engineers. The book shares the author's long experience on the subject and focuses on the physical understanding of dynamics applied to mill foundations.

The book covers fundamentals necessary for understanding and evaluating dynamic response of mill foundations and lists sequential steps that are needed for the design of the CRUSHING MILL FOUNDATION with prime focus on achieving satisfactory performance of the Mill and all associated machinery for which the foundation is designed.

Besides the design philosophy, it covers modelling and analysis of the mill foundation using i) commercially available Finite Element Analysis Packages, and ii) commercially available Structural Design and Analysis Packages, with focus on Modeling and analysis Techniques, Structural Design process, precaution during Construction of the foundation.

It is the author's concerned observation that in most cases, due recognition to Machine, Foundation and Soil data is lacking. More often than not, Machine data as well as Geo-technical data is treated as black box and used in the design without its proper understanding. A better interaction between foundation designer and machine manufacturer would definitely improve the foundation performance and thereby machine performance, however, this interaction is found lacking. It is the author's concerned opinion that such interaction is not only desirable but essential too.

The design aides/ methodologies provide insight to the dynamic behaviour of the machine-foundation system and all associated structural and mechanical elements, for satisfactory performance of the mill, thus suggesting the need for the complete knowledge of load transfer mechanism from the mill machinery to the foundation and the knowledge of excitation forces and associated frequencies for correct evaluation of mill performance.

DR K. G. BHATIA