Method of controlling the movement of a longwall excavation front, especially the face or breast of a coal seam
First Claim
1. A method of controlling the advance of an mining front in longwall mining wherein a support is subdivided to form a row of props with respective fluid-operated prop rams and with respective excavator assemblies disposed along said mining front, each assembly comprises a conveyor element linked to the other elements of the chain to form a continuous conveyor displacing mined material along said front and a cutter element is provided to mine said material from a seam into said conveyor, each conveyor element being connected to the respective prop by a respective fluid-operated displacement cylinder, the displacement cylinders and at least the rams of the props are controlled by a central control computer, and sensors are provided to detect movements of said props and conveyor elements and are connected to said computer, said method comprising the steps of:
- (a) automatically determining at said computer, during mining of said material from said seam and displacement thereof along said conveyor, cyclically an actual location and contour of a conveyor line (F1, F2, F3) of at least some of said conveyor elements corresponding to actual positions thereof;
(b) automatically determining at said computer an actual location and contour of a prop line (A1, A2) of at least some of said props corresponding to actual positions thereof;
(c) establishing a baseline at said computer utilizing said conveyor line and said prop line; and
(d) automatically advancing at least some of said conveyor elements and drawing at least some of said props after said conveyor elements under the control of said computer using said baseline as a reference for the advance of said conveyor elements and the drawing of said props.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The advance of a mining front in longwall mining is effected by a process in which sensors measure the displacement of displacement cylinders coupling the linked prop elements to the linked conveyor elements with their respective cutters. A computer generates a baseline represented by the actual prop line as a starting point and the conveyor elements and cutters are then advanced all along the mining front via the displacement cylinders. The sensors input the respective displacements into the computer so that an actual conveyor line is determined in the computer and serves as the baseline for after-drawing of the prop elements via the cylinders. The new prop line calculated by the computer then forms the baseline for further advance and the advance can be controlled to ultimately align the conveyor elements along the conveyor line corresponding to a setpoint line defined by the computer and parallel to the original baseline.
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Citations
14 Claims
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1. A method of controlling the advance of an mining front in longwall mining wherein a support is subdivided to form a row of props with respective fluid-operated prop rams and with respective excavator assemblies disposed along said mining front, each assembly comprises a conveyor element linked to the other elements of the chain to form a continuous conveyor displacing mined material along said front and a cutter element is provided to mine said material from a seam into said conveyor, each conveyor element being connected to the respective prop by a respective fluid-operated displacement cylinder, the displacement cylinders and at least the rams of the props are controlled by a central control computer, and sensors are provided to detect movements of said props and conveyor elements and are connected to said computer, said method comprising the steps of:
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(a) automatically determining at said computer, during mining of said material from said seam and displacement thereof along said conveyor, cyclically an actual location and contour of a conveyor line (F1, F2, F3) of at least some of said conveyor elements corresponding to actual positions thereof; (b) automatically determining at said computer an actual location and contour of a prop line (A1, A2) of at least some of said props corresponding to actual positions thereof; (c) establishing a baseline at said computer utilizing said conveyor line and said prop line; and (d) automatically advancing at least some of said conveyor elements and drawing at least some of said props after said conveyor elements under the control of said computer using said baseline as a reference for the advance of said conveyor elements and the drawing of said props. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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Specification