An Approach to Realizing Process Control for Underground Mining Operations of Mobile Machines

PLoS One. 2015 Jun 10;10(6):e0129572. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129572. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

The excavation and production in underground mines are complicated processes which consist of many different operations. The process of underground mining is considerably constrained by the geometry and geology of the mine. The various mining operations are normally performed in series at each working face. The delay of a single operation will lead to a domino effect, thus delay the starting time for the next process and the completion time of the entire process. This paper presents a new approach to the process control for underground mining operations, e.g. drilling, bolting, mucking. This approach can estimate the working time and its probability for each operation more efficiently and objectively by improving the existing PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) and CPM (Critical Path Method). If the delay of the critical operation (which is on a critical path) inevitably affects the productivity of mined ore, the approach can rapidly assign mucking machines new jobs to increase this amount at a maximum level by using a new mucking algorithm under external constraints.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Mining / instrumentation
  • Mining / methods*

Grants and funding

This work is a part of I2mine project, (a.k.a. Innovative Technologies and Concepts for the Intelligent Deep Mine of the Future) funded by the EC’s Seventh Framework Program under Grant No. 280855; www.i2mine.eu. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.