Comprehensive and Integrated Mine Ventilation Consultation Model – CIMVCM

Abstract

Since the beginning of mining, the problems induced by ventilation in underground coal mining practices have prompted great needs of reliable consulting tools to assist mining engineers, government agencies or researchers’ investigating and analyzing the mine ventilation system, or making any ventilation managements. Due to the development of mining method and modern mining (e.g. longwall mining) employed in recent years, the mentioned needs become more and more critical for mine operators. In this paper, a PC based computer mine ventilation consultation software model developed by the authors is introduced. This model is called CIMVCM (Comprehensive and Integrated Mine Ventilation Consultation Model). The computer model is a comprehensive, reliable and user-friendly one. The nature of “comprehensive” means the model can be used to consult the system’s rational reliability allocation, can assist engineers to select the best ventilation plan from multiple candidate ones, can quantitatively rate a system’s potential risk and safety degree and also can check the system’s reliability based on field observations. All of those works are very important to mine operators understanding the system and then taking proper measures to control the potential risk. In addition to that, usages of developed computer program are also very easy. Users can operate the program without possessing an in-depth knowledge on computer and mathematical theory. Until today, CIMVCM has been successfully employed in numerous cases of designing and assessing various mine ventilation systems during the past decades. The reliability of mathematical models used in CIMVCM has also been proven by such applications.