Investigation And Modeling Of Longwall Face-To-Face Transfers

Longwall face-to-face transfers can cost more than $100 per minute in lost production potential and $100,000 for personnel and supplies. Such high costs make extensive planning and control of the transfer process a critical necessity for the economic feasibility of longwall operations. Operations research techniques are used for the analysis and modeling of longwall face-to-face transfers. Transfer data has been collected from companies who operate, over 35%, of the total US longwall faces. Comprehensive sequence networks of existing longwall transfers were developed; simulation was used to generate models of transfers under Carving conditions; and the economic feasibility of tine-cost tradeoffs in the transfer procedure was investigated.