Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 5785–5790 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings 2214-7853 © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of 33rd Danubia Adria Symposium on Advances in Experimental Mechanics. DAS 2016 Assessment methodology of a technical condition of the bucket chain excavator structure Jerzy Czmochowski, Pawel Maslak* Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Machine Design and Research, Lukasiewicza 7/9, 50-371 Wroclaw, Poland , Paulina Dzialak, Grzegorz Przybylek, Mariusz Stanco Abstract The paper presents a method for checking the technical condition and method of estimating time further exploitation of opencast mining machines after years of use. This method is based on numerical calculations FEM, measurements of operational vibration and long-term measurement loads of mining. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of 33rd Danubia Adria Symposium on Advances in Experimental Mechanics. Keywords: opencast minig machines; FEM analysis; NDT. 1. Introduction Superstructures of machines operated in open-cast lignite mines are periodically reviewed. These research are particularly important for machinery which service life exceeds 30 years. After such a long period of work in these machines is observed more and more frequently the phenomenon of fatigue, which effects can be very serious [1]. To avoid these undesirable phenomena is suggested to carry out a technical check of the state of the superstructure based on numerical methods and experimental [2, 3]. * Corresponding author: Pawel Maślak, tel.: +48-71-320-23-88; E-mail address: pawel.maslak@pwr.edu.pl