Taking up and Analysing Workings and Figures for the Evaluation of Functional Interdependences and their use for Computer-Based Research and Technical/Economical Improvements of Conventional Tunneling Operations at Collieries in the Ruhr-District

Summary

Compared to other underground workings—such as face performance—the improvement of tunneling operations with conventional methods (drilling and blasting) in collieries have only been very little, thus giving reason to research to improve them. On the one hand, a method of taking up and analysing the workings in a short time had to be found and on the other, by uncovering the functional interdependences of a number of different influences, a computer-based model of the workings to find out the influences of organisatorical and technical alternations on the workings and performance and economic efficiency had to be developed.

The common methods of supervision of workings in collieries are labour intensive, especially in taking up and processing the data not undertaken in a desirable amount in the past years. The information derived from this data depends very much on the qualification of the reviser and thus vary. Especially long-term i investigations involve a great amount of supervision and a large number of qualified personnel. To achieve improvements, a computer-based taking up method was introduced, where data taken up underground is put onto special sheets easily fed into a computer, giving information about the workings in a very short time (i.e. percentage of special workings of a whole round; mean value and variation of certain data, etc,). The results give hints to the supervisers to find the reasons of bad performance and improve workings at once. Also the compiled results of several days and several tunneling operations form the basis for statistical evaluations to uncover functional interdependences leading to precise mathematical functions used in a computer-model to investigate the probable effects of technical or organisational alternations in the tunneling operations.

This model, simulating the tunneling, is meant to support the decision-making of planning engineers in a “question-answer-structure” to find out methods for improving operations and giving figures of the expected performance in a better way.