Proceedings of the Tomsk Order of the October Revolution and Order of the Red Banner of Labor Polytechnic Institute named after S. M. Kirov

Vol. 177　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　1971

On the Possibility of Solving the Problem of Increasing the Average Advance Rates of Rock Roadway Excavation in Kuzbass to 200 m per Month

O. D. Alimov, V. G. Lukyanov

The existing average rates of driving workings through rock—40–70 m/month—do not meet present-day requirements. In order to fulfill the standard time limits for mine construction, it is necessary that the commercial rates of driving horizontal and inclined workings average no less than 100 m/month. For many years now, production workers and scientists have been trying to create real conditions for a substantial increase in the rates of driving underground workings through rock. Much has already been done in this direction.

The principal advantage of high-speed roadway driving is the significant reduction in the time required for opening and preparing new mine horizons, and, in construction, the reduction of the construction period. The economic efficiency of high-speed roadway driving is due to the attainment of higher labor productivity and a reduction in general mine and overhead costs. When the rate is increased from 50 to 200 m/month, the cost of 1 running meter of working is reduced by 15–20%.

The equipment available in Kuzbass for conducting mine-development work, and the experience gained in high-speed driving of workings, make it possible to achieve average technical rates for horizontal workings above 100 m/month. Examples are provided by high-speed drivages in Kuzbass: at Mine No. 8, where 145.8 m of a panel entry were driven in one month; at the Ziminka Mine No. 1–2, where 170 m of a panel entry were driven in one month; at the Tomusinskaya Mine No. 5–6, where 155 m of a main adit were driven in one month; at the Egozovskaya Mine No. 1, where 220.5 m of a panel entry were driven; at Mine No. 3–3-bis, where 275.3 m of crosscut and 1160 m of group coal entry were driven in one month; at Mine No. 5–6, where 292 m of crosscut were driven; and at the Kalinin Mine, where 302 m of panel entry were driven in one month.

It must be noted that the high production indicators at the mines listed were achieved not through the use of any particularly new production equipment or technically advanced machinery. Of decisive importance here were a higher saturation of the face with driving equipment and the uninterrupted supply of rock cars, support materials, as well as the creation of conditions ensuring their full use. The high qualifications of the drivage workers, the inclusion in the brigade of electricians, a blasting specialist, mechanics, and material deliverers, the introduction of a well-thought-out multi-cycle organization of work at the face, and the maximum overlapping in time of individual operations of the drivage cycle contribute to the achievement

high advance rates. If the experience of high-speed drivages is analyzed sufficiently well and introduced into the everyday practice of mine operation, this will make it possible to substantially increase the average rates of driving workings in Kuzbass.

Even greater possibilities can be realized when the results of a number of research and experimental-design works are introduced. Naturally, in order to ensure further growth in the rate of driving development workings and to reduce the labor intensity of the work, it is necessary to improve the mechanization of all operations of the drivage cycle and to create machines for comprehensive mechanization. As is known, the main processes in the drilling-and-blasting method of driving workings are drilling of blastholes, loading of rock, and support of the working.

To reduce the labor intensity and time expenditures for drilling the face, high-productivity long-stroke drilling machines of rotary action (for rock with \(f < 10\)) and rotary-percussive action (for drilling blastholes in rock with \(f > 10\)) should be introduced everywhere. For installing drilling machines on existing loading machines, more advanced manipulators should be created in the near future. This task must be set before scientific workers and machine builders as one of the primary ones. Without good manipulators it is impossible to achieve success even with the most advanced designs of drilling machines.

It is necessary to improve and, as far as possible, more widely introduce drilling carriages designed by the Kuznetsk plant and KuzNIIUI.

At the same time, serious research and experimental-design work must be carried out to create drilling-and-loading units. The successes already achieved in improving the designs of drilling and loading machines make it possible to solve this problem in the near future. It is advisable to create drilling-and-loading units both on the basis of continuous-action loading machines and on the basis of cyclic-action machines well mastered in practice. As experience is accumulated, drilling-and-loading machines should be improved so that they also perform the functions of machines for mechanizing work on supporting workings.

To increase the efficiency of drilling-and-blasting operations, the depth of blastholes should be increased to 2.5–3.0 m, the quality of explosives and electric detonators improved, and mechanization provided for the preparation and production of blasthole stemming.

Improvements should be introduced into the design of loading machines (increase the capacity of buckets, improve their configuration, reduce cycle time). These recommendations have already been well developed and have long awaited introduction. Serious attention should be paid to increasing the capacity of mine cars and improving the means of exchanging mine cars. For this purpose, in the near future it is necessary to select the best designs of devices for exchanging mine cars, as well as fixtures that eliminate the exchange of mine cars (suspended and bridge conveyors, bunker trains), the use of self-propelled mine cars, and to introduce them widely into practice.

In parallel with the improvement of drilling, loading, and transport machines, possibilities should be sought for substantially reducing heavy manual labor in supporting workings; the experience of using various designs of support erectors should be generalized, the best of them widely introduced, and an attempt made to mount their main assemblies on the basis of existing loading and drilling-and-loading machines.

Effective use of new equipment is impossible without a well-thought-out organization and remuneration of labor. These questions must be resolved by the appropriate specialists.

Much has already been done to resolve all these questions, and therefore solving the problem of increasing the average rates of driving rock roadways in Kuzbass to 200 m/month is entirely possible.

To this end, in the near future it is necessary to carry out a serious generalization of the available, and already partly forgotten, recommendations, and to conduct targeted additional research and experimental-design work in the following four interrelated areas:

1. Improvement of drilling machines, manipulators, and blasting means.

2. Improvement of loading machines, transport devices, and means for exchanging mine cars.

3. Search for methods and machine designs that facilitate the support of workings.

4. Search for a rational organization of labor when using new mechanization in driving workings, and for the economic expediency of various variants of integrated mechanization.

There are every possibility in Kuzbass for solving these tasks. There are research organizations that deal with these problems, mining-machine-building plants, and qualified mining personnel. To realize these possibilities, genuine coordination is needed, making it possible to carry out these works in the shortest possible time and with the greatest depth of study of the issues.

Therefore it would be desirable, under the Kuzbass Sovnarkhoz or the Kuzbassugol combine, to create a special working coordinating commission that would draw up a plan of the work necessary to solve the problem in the next 2–3 years, and would provide scientific and administrative leadership for these works. In addition to scientific-methodological questions, this commission must also resolve questions of financing the work on the problem and evaluate the results obtained by individual performers.

It is necessary to include in such a commission the most highly qualified scientific workers and production workers. The plan of work for solving the problem, drawn up by this commission, must provide for the active involvement of all organizations that may prove useful. Several laboratories of the Institute of Mining and the Institute of Economics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, KuzNIUI, KuzNIIShakhtostroi, the Kemerovo Mining Institute, the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, and the design bureaus of the Novokuznetsk, Yurga, Tomsk, and other plants could take part in these works.