Equipment Capacity
Figure 9: Effect of
Equipment and Capacities on Rate
It was evident from the study that big breaker feeders and big fast shuttle cars push the exposure rate up, and that Joy 12CM12 miners cut faster than Sandvik ABM25 miners resulting in increased rates. Conversely, limiting the discharge rate through the breaker feeder slows the rate, while a failure to utilise hungry boards on a shuttle car at one mine resulted in a 10% lower exposure rate.
To further evaluate the effect of equipment and capacity on process rate comparable support densities and exposure rates were evaluated against mines utilising similar continuous miners. It was again noted that there were significant variations in process rates for miner-bolters, as shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10: Process Rate of Mines with Comparable
Support Regimes and Equipment
A similar evaluation based on miner-bolters was not as
conclusive (Figure 11), probably due to the limited data set, different shuttle
car configurations (ie; 1 and 2 cars), and varying bolting efficiencies.
Figure 11: Process Rate of
Mines with Comparable Support Regimes and Equipment (Bolter-Miner)[GG1]
