Determination of volumetric changes at an underground stone mine: a photogrammetry case study

Photogrammetry, as a tool for monitoring underground mine deformation, is an alternative to traditional point measurement devices, and may be capable of accurate measurements in situations where technologies such as laser scanning are unsuited, undesired, or cost-prohibitive. An underground limestone mine in Ohio is used as a test case for monitoring of structurally unstable pillars. Seven pillars were photographed over in a 63 day period, punctuated by four visits. Using photogrammetry, point clouds of the mine geometry were obtained and triangulation surfaces were generated to determine volumes of change over time. Pillar spalling in the range of 0.29–4.03 m³ of rock on individual rib faces was detected. Isolated incidents of rock expansion prior to failure, and the isolated failure of a weak shale band were also observed. Much of the pillars remained unchanged during the monitoring period, which is indicative of proper alignment in the triangulated surfaces. The photographs of some ribs were of either too poor quality or had insufficient overlap, and were not included. However, photogrammetry was successfully applied to multiple ribs in quantifying the pillar geometry change over time.     

A comparative study of dust control practices in Chinese and Australian longwall coal mines

Mine dust is one of the main hazards in underground longwall mines worldwide.In order to solve the mine dust problem,a significant number of studies have been carried out regarding longwall mine dust control,both in China and Australia.This paper presents a comparative study of dust control practices in Chinese and Australian longwall mines,with particular references to statutory limits,dust monitoring methods and dust management practices,followed by a brief discussion on the research status of longwall mine dust control in both countries.The study shows that water infusion,face ventilation controls,water sprays,and deep and wet cutting in longwall shearer operations are commonly practiced in almost all underground longwall mines and that both Chinese and Australian longwall mine dust control practices have their own advantages and disadvantages.It is concluded that there is a need for further development and innovative design of more effective dust mitigation products or systems despite the development of various dust control technologies.Based on the examinations and discussions,the authors have made some recommendations for further research and development in dust control in longwall mines.It is hoped that this comparative study will provide beneficial guidance for scholars and engineers who are engaging in longwall mine dust control research and practice.     

Guest Editorial–Special issue on Ground Control in Mining

<正>Ground control is the science of studying and controlling the behavior of rock strata in response to mining operations.Ground control related research has made significant advancements over the last 35 years and these accomplishments are well documented in the proceedings of the annual International Conference on     

A new design of foaming agent mixing device for a pneumatic foaming system used for mine dust suppression

To overcome the drawbacks of the conventional foam technology used for dust suppression,including large pressure loss,high water pressure and low driving pressure,a new pneumatic foaming system is introduced.Then an original design of foaming agent mixing device is proposed,and its performance is investigated and evaluated under different pressure compensations.Experimental results show that the maximum absorption amount increases by 2.9-6.7 times at a pressure compensation of 0.04-0.2 MPa compared with no pressure compensation.The pressure loss and pressure fluctuation both reduce significantly with increasing pressure compensation.The critical outlet pressure increases by30.4-240%.Field application indicates that the proposed mixing device ensures the reliable addition of foaming agent used for foam dust suppression.The effect of foam on dust suppression is remarkable,and the economic cost of foam is low.Therefore,there is reason to believe that the new mixing device will greatly promote foam technology to be widely used for suppressing dust in underground coal mines.     

Bulk Al/SiC nanocomposite prepared by ball milling and hot pressing method

Nano-sized Al/SiC powders were prepared by mechanical alloying method. Two sorts of SiC particle, i.e., nano-sized and popular micron-sized SiC were utilized. The particle size and microstructure of the milled powder were characterised. Effects of the particle size and agglomerate state of SiC, as well as the microstructure of Al/SiC nanocomposite were studied by SEM and TEM. The results show that nano-sized SiC particles is dispersed in aluminium uniformly after ball milled for only 2 h, whereas the similar process need about 10 h for popular micron-sized SiC particle. The bulk Al/SiC nanocomposite can be fabricated by hot pressing the nano-sized Al/SiC powders at temperature about 723 K under pressure of 100 MPa.     

Austenite stability in Fe–Mn–Si-based shape memory alloys

The stability of austenite in a number of Fe–Mn–Si-based shape memory alloys has been investigated. It was found that a grain boundary precipitate of BCC structure is formed over a wide range of alloy compositions and heat treatment temperatures. This grain boundary phase has been identified as the chi (χ) phase. Although up to 3 vol.% of the grain boundary precipitate was generated by isothermal aging in the range 500–800 °C, it was found not to markedly affect the mechanical properties or the shape memory effect. Nano-indentation indicated that the hardness and strength of the parent and precipitate phase are very similar, as are their compositions.     

Trust-based group services selection in web-based service-oriented environments

Multi-agent technologies have been widely employed for the development of web-based systems, including web-based e-markets, web-based grid computing, e-governments and service-oriented software systems. In these service-oriented systems, service provider agents and service consumer agents are autonomous and rational entities, which can enter and leave the environments freely. For simplicity, we use terms ‘provider’ and ‘consumer’ to represent this two types of agents. How to select the most suitable service providers according to a service request from a consumer in such an open environment is a very challenging issue. In this paper, we propose an innovative trust model, called the GTrust model, for service group selection in general service-oriented environments. In the GTrust model, the trust evaluation for a service group is based on the functionality coverage of the group, the dependency relationships among individual services in the group, the ratings of individual services on the attributes of the service request and a similarity measurement of the extent to which reference reports can reflect the service request in terms of the priority distribution of attributes. The experimental results and analysis demonstrate the good performance of the GTrust model on the service group selection in service-oriented environments.     

A Novel Data Centric Information Retrieval Protocol for Queries in Delay Tolerant Networks

Information Retrieval (IR) systems aim to retrieve data that satisfies certain requirements and constitute an important service in many types of networks, including Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs). In current DTN based IR systems, the data that satisfies a query is assumed to be stored on a single node. Therefore, once a node receives a query in which it has the corresponding data, the query can be resolved completely. However, in scenarios where a query requires data from multiple nodes, these IR systems may fail. Henceforth, in this paper, we propose Distributed Data-Centric Information Retrieval (DDC-IR), a data centric IR system that supports all query types; e.g., continuous and complex. More importantly, it is designed specifically to operate in DTNs. It also incorporates a new packet, aka Query Reply Packet, that includes both a query and one or more replies. We show how this packet facilitates efficient query resolution and enables data centric routing. In addition, it uses caching so that nodes store popular queries that has the effect of speeding up query resolution. We have conducted an extensive simulation study to compare DDC-IR to state of the art IR systems using the popular Random Waypoint model and a trace-file containing student movements on a campus. The results show that DDC-IR is able to resolve 50 % more queries and has an 80 % lower buffer occupancy level than existing IR systems. We also tested DDC-IR in networks with varying sizes. For networks with 100 nodes, DDC-IR is able to resolve queries while current IR systems fail to resolve any queries. In particular, when the number of nodes increases, current IR systems fail to resolve any queries, whilst DDC-IR is able to resolve complex and continuous queries. The influence of the number of sub-queries on query resolution time is also studied. Specifically, when the number of sub-queries in a complex query increases from five to nine, DDC-IR uses 50 % more time to resolve a query. In comparison, prior IR systems fail to resolve any queries.     

A new robust observer-based adaptive type-2 fuzzy control for a class of nonlinear systems

In this paper, a novel robust observer-based adaptive controller is presented using a proposed simplified type-2 fuzzy neural network (ST2FNN) and a new three dimensional type-2 membership function is presented. Proposed controller can be applied to the control of high-order nonlinear systems and adaptation of the consequent parameters and stability analysis are carried out using Lyapunov theorem. Moreover, a new adaptive compensator is presented to eliminate the effect of the external disturbance, unknown nonlinear functions approximation errors and sate estimation errors. In the proposed scheme, using the Lyapunov and Barbalat's theorem it is shown that the system is stable and the tracking error of the system converges to zero asymptotically. The proposed method is simulated on a flexible joint robot, two-link robot manipulator and inverted double pendulums system. Simulation results confirm that in contrast to other robust techniques, our proposed method is simple, give better performance in the presence of noise, external disturbance and uncertainties, and has less computational cost.