Rapid development of coal deep mining equipment and technology, that is connected with widespread introduction of high-performance longwall sets of equipment is accompanied with an increase of economic losses in case of its possible downtime. The analysis of dismantling experience in modern Russian mines has shown that in absolute majority of cases the actual duration of re-assembling with rega...

1 Department of Construction and Manufacture Engineering, Polytechnic School of Mieres, University of Oviedo, Mieres, 33600 Asturias, Spain 2Department of Exploitation and Prospecting Mines, Mining Engineering School, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, 33004 Asturias, Spain 3 Department of Exploitation Mines, Polytechnic University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain 4Department of Exploitation and Prosp...

ROBERT A. HANEY Mine Safety and Health Administration, Pittsburgh Health Technology Center The effectiveness of these dust control techniques has been evaluated primarily through the use of instantaneous dust measurements. These instantaneous dust measurements give a relative indication of whether dust control and -------------------~ employee exposure improve or deteriorate. Because the instan...

Large deformations that accompany longwall mining result in complex spatial and temporal distributions of changes in undrained pore ̄uid pressures around the advancing face. These seemingly anomalous changes are recorded in the rapid water level response of undermined and adjacent wells, and may be explained in the short-term as a undrained poroelastic e€ect. A three-dimensional ®nite element mo...

Longwall coal mine operators in the U.S. are required to ventilate multipanel longwall districts, but may have little or no knowledge about what happens to the ventilation air between the inlet evaluation points (IEPs), bleeder evaluation points (BEPs) and bleeder fans. The effectiveness of bleeder performance can directly influence the ability of a ventilation system to remove and dilute coal ...

In order to reduce fire hazards caused by spontaneous combustion in longwall gob areas, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study is being conducted by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to simulate the spontaneous heating of coal in longwall gob areas. A CFD model was first developed to model the spontaneous heating process in a two longwall panel district using a b...