Design Aspects of an Excavator Arm

Excavator arm is one of the most important attachments of an excavator. The arm has to work reliably under uncertain working conditions with high load. Hence it is necessary to design an equipment which has maximum reliability and minimum weight, keeping the design safe under all loading conditions. This paper focuses on the structural weight modification of the excavator arm by improving the design as well as changing the material. A detailed investigation has been carried out by finite element analysis using ANSYS software to understand the stress developed in the arm for all design considerations. Finally, the stress developed for every design has been examined to check whether they are safe or not. The outcome of this investigation is that the weight of the excavator arm can be significantly reduced by modifying the design as well as by changing the material, keeping the design within safe limit.