Some prerequisites for the use of autonomous heavy platforms in open-pit mining

Abstract

Automobile transport currently dominates the transportation of overburden and coal at open pit mines. Its share has been steadily growing since the 1970s. This is due to objective reasons, first of all, a rather limited area of application of railway transport: a significant transport distance, a large cargo traffic and a small depth of the quarry. First of all, it concerned the depth of open-cut mines, because when deepening the quarry for one trench it was necessary to extract considerable volumes of overburden to provide accommodation of transport berms because of the big radius of curvature of a railway track, which reached 200 m. Therefore, given the fact that open-pit mining went to a greater depth at almost all enterprises, there was a widespread abandonment of rail transport for intra-pit transportation in favor of automobile transport. For various reasons, a fairly economical and promising mode of transport – conveyor transport – has not become widespread at Kuzbass coal mines. Not least of all, this is due to climatic conditions, as well as the complexity of mining and geological conditions of the Kuznetsk Basin, which are among the most complicated in the world. Suffice it to say that more than 80% of coal seams have a complex or very complex structure. Therefore, the problem of research and description of the key characteristics in open-pit mining is very urgent.