Mine ventilation planning in the 1980s

Abstract

In this paper, the author has attempted to trace the development of mine ventilation planning from the traditional, manual and largely empirical methods of the past to the numerate computer-based techniques of the 1980s. The computer revolution has changed the face of many engineering disciplines, not least mine environmental engineering. Nevertheless, the mining industries of the world have not all been equally progressive in adapting to the flexibility, power and practical utilization of the new methodologies. It is, for example, incongruous that current textbooks on mine ventilation separate completely the topics of network analysis and ventilation planning with very little cross-referencing. Many of the current generation of mine ventilation engineers recognize the need to ‘know about computers’ but find difficulty in translating this into their daily work. The growing availability of self-teaching, friendly software for personal microcomputers, coupled with interactive graphics, will assist greatly in promoting uncomplicated but powerful usage of computers. Young engineers now graduating from universities and colleges have been brought up in a computer-oriented environment and are competent in interacting with these machines. Indeed, they wonder how the job was ever done without magnetic data bases and high-speed computation aid.