title: An Approach to Realizing Process Control for Underground Mining Operations of Mobile Machines.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Division of Mining and Geotechnical Engineering, Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden.
authors.forename: Håkan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Schunnesson
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.
authors.forename: Mikael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rinne
authors.affiliation: School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sturgul
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D008906:Mining / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*