Planning for faster drivage rate with roadheaders in Indian longwall mines: A field investigation

摘要

Roadway drivages for timely preparation of longwall replacement panels matching massive production requirements, form the key to minimise the overall cost of longwalling. Keeping gate road development priorities and needs of longwall retreat mining in view, field investigations were carried out in Indian coalfields to ascertain the development rates achieved with existing roadway development systems(RDS) employing roadheaders as the cutting system and bridge and outbye conveyors as the transport system.This paper synthesizes the experience gathered while studying the roadheader performance in gate road development of Indian long walls to evolve a quantitative method, the Markov Modelling, for simulating and predicting roadway development system(RDS) performance under certainty and uncertainty to determine realistic time requirements for developing a panel of a given size under equipment and roof failures conditions. The machine utilisation and availability charts have been prepared and correlations between monthly progress and monthly-worked-hours have been developed for different roadheader models and mining methods were developed.The proposed mathematical model shows a promising application for planning and selecting suitable equipment configurations for achieving desired development rates. It has also identified the scope for improving development rates with existing infrastructure and with new infrastructure and equipment.