Shearer Guidance: A Major Advance in Longwall Mining

Author(s):  
David C. Reid ◽  
David W. Hainsworth ◽  
Jonathon C. Ralston ◽  
Ronald J. McPhee
1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
A. H. Gabriel

The development of the physics of the solar atmosphere during the last 50 years has been greatly influenced by the increasing capability of observations made from space. Access to images and spectra of the hotter plasma in the UV, XUV and X-ray regions provided a major advance over the few coronal forbidden lines seen in the visible and enabled the cooler chromospheric and photospheric plasma to be seen in its proper perspective, as part of a total system. In this way space observations have stimulated new and important advances, not only in space but also in ground-based observations and theoretical modelling, so that today we find a well-balanced harmony between the three techniques.


Author(s):  
Angela Pineros-Fernandez ◽  
David B. Drake ◽  
Pamela A. Rodeheaver ◽  
Deborah L. Moody ◽  
Richard Edlich ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Stephen Yablo

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. However, it has played no real role in philosophical semantics, which is surprising. This is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection—about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. This book maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results—directed content—is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. The book represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.


Author(s):  
Dale Chimenti ◽  
Stanislav Rokhlin ◽  
Peter Nagy

Physical Ultrasonics of Composites is a rigorous introduction to the characterization of composite materials by means of ultrasonic waves. Composites are treated here not simply as uniform media, but as inhomogeneous layered anisotropic media with internal structure characteristic of composite laminates. The objective here is to concentrate on exposing the singular behavior of ultrasonic waves as they interact with layered, anisotropic materials, materials which incorporate those structural elements typical of composite laminates. This book provides a synergistic description of both modeling and experimental methods in addressing wave propagation phenomena and composite property measurements. After a brief review of basic composite mechanics, a thorough treatment of ultrasonics in anisotropic media is presented, along with composite characterization methods. The interaction of ultrasonic waves at interfaces of anisotropic materials is discussed, as are guided waves in composite plates and rods. Waves in layered media are developed from the standpoint of the "Stiffness Matrix", a major advance over the conventional, potentially unstable Transfer Matrix approach. Laminated plates are treated both with the stiffness matrix and using Floquet analysis. The important influence on the received electronic signals in ultrasonic materials characterization from transducer geometry and placement are carefully exposed in a dedicated chapter. Ultrasonic wave interactions are especially susceptible to such influences because ultrasonic transducers are seldom more than a dozen or so wavelengths in diameter. The book ends with a chapter devoted to the emerging field of air-coupled ultrasonics. This new technology has come of age with the development of purpose-built transducers and electronics and is finding ever wider applications, particularly in the characterization of composite laminates.


Author(s):  
Rui Wu ◽  
Penghui Zhang ◽  
Pinnaduwa H. S. W. Kulatilake ◽  
Hao Luo ◽  
Qingyuan He

AbstractAt present, non-pillar entry protection in longwall mining is mainly achieved through either the gob-side entry retaining (GER) procedure or the gob-side entry driving (GED) procedure. The GER procedure leads to difficulties in maintaining the roadway in mining both the previous and current panels. A narrow coal pillar about 5–7 m must be left in the GED procedure; therefore, it causes permanent loss of some coal. The gob-side pre-backfill driving (GPD) procedure effectively removes the wasting of coal resources that exists in the GED procedure and finds an alternative way to handle the roadway maintenance problem that exists in the GER procedure. The FLAC3D software was used to numerically investigate the stress and deformation distributions and failure of the rock mass surrounding the previous and current panel roadways during each stage of the GPD procedure which requires "twice excavation and mining". The results show that the stress distribution is slightly asymmetric around the previous panel roadway after the “primary excavation”. The stronger and stiffer backfill compared to the coal turned out to be the main bearing body of the previous panel roadway during the "primary mining". The highest vertical stresses of 32.6 and 23.1 MPa, compared to the in-situ stress of 10.5 MPa, appeared in the backfill wall and coal seam, respectively. After the "primary mining", the peak vertical stress under the coal seam at the floor level was slightly higher (18.1 MPa) than that under the backfill (17.8 MPa). After the "secondary excavation", the peak vertical stress under the coal seam at the floor level was slightly lower (18.7 MPa) than that under the backfill (19.8 MPa); the maximum floor heave and maximum roof sag of the current panel roadway were 252.9 and 322.1 mm, respectively. During the "secondary mining", the stress distribution in the rock mass surrounding the current panel roadway was mainly affected by the superposition of the front abutment pressure from the current panel and the side abutment pressure from the previous panel. The floor heave of the current panel roadway reached a maximum of 321.8 mm at 5 m ahead of the working face; the roof sag increased to 828.4 mm at the working face. The peak abutment pressure appeared alternately in the backfill and the coal seam during the whole procedure of "twice excavation and mining" of the GPD procedure. The backfill provided strong bearing capacity during all stages of the GPD procedure and exhibited reliable support for the roadway. The results provide scientific insight for engineering practice of the GPD procedure.


ACS Omega ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangjun Chen ◽  
Qi Jia ◽  
Xinjian Li ◽  
Shuailong Feng ◽  
Lin Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Satar Mahdevari ◽  
Mohammad Hayati

AbstractDesigning a suitable support system is of great importance in longwall mining to ensure the safe and stable working conditions over the entire life of the mine. In high-speed mechanized longwall mining, the most vulnerable zones to failure are roof strata in the vicinity of the tailgate roadway and T-junctions. Severe roof displacements are occurred in the tailgate roadway due to the high-stress concentrations around the exposed roof span. In this respect, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was utilized to optimize tailgate support systems in the Tabas longwall coal mine, northeast of Iran. The nine geomechanical parameters were obtained through the field and laboratory studies including density, uniaxial compressive strength, angle of internal friction, cohesion, shear strength, tensile strength, Young’s modulus, slake durability index, and rock mass rating. A design of experiment was developed through considering a Central Composite Design (CCD) on the independent variables. The 149 experiments are resulted based on the output of CCD, and were introduced to a software package of finite difference numerical method to calculate the maximum roof displacements (dmax) in each experiment as the response of design. Therefore, the geomechanical variables are merged and consolidated into a modified quadratic equation for prediction of the dmax. The proposed model was executed in four approaches of linear, two-factor interaction, quadratic, and cubic. The best squared correlation coefficient was obtained as 0.96. The prediction capability of the model was examined by testing on some unseen real data that were monitored at the mine. The proposed model appears to give a high goodness of fit with the accuracy of 0.90. These results indicate the accuracy and reliability of the developed model, which may be considered as a reliable tool for optimizing or redesigning the support systems in longwall tailgates. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to identify the key variables affecting the dmax, and to recognize their pairwise interaction effects. The key parameters influencing the dmax are respectively found to be slake durability index, Young’s modulus, uniaxial compressive strength, and rock mass rating.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 2461
Author(s):  
José María Mora-Gutiérrez ◽  
María A. Fernández-Seara ◽  
Rebeca Echeverria-Chasco ◽  
Nuria Garcia-Fernandez

Renal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques are currently in vogue, as they provide in vivo information on renal volume, function, metabolism, perfusion, oxygenation, and microstructural alterations, without the need for exogenous contrast media. New imaging biomarkers can be identified using these tools, which represent a major advance in the understanding and study of the different pathologies affecting the kidney. Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is one of the most important diseases worldwide due to its high prevalence and impact on public health. However, its multifactorial etiology poses a challenge for both basic and clinical research. Therefore, the use of novel renal MRI techniques is an attractive step forward in the comprehension of DKD, both in its pathogenesis and in its detection and surveillance in the clinical practice. This review article outlines the most promising MRI techniques in the study of DKD, with the purpose of stimulating their clinical translation as possible tools for the diagnosis, follow-up, and monitoring of the clinical impacts of new DKD treatments.


Author(s):  
Niamh Carey ◽  
Conor Hickey ◽  
Laura Mc Cullagh ◽  
Michael Barry

IntroductionIn 2018, the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE) was commissioned to conduct a health technology assessment (HTA) of one of the first commercially available chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, tisagenlecleucel. CAR T-cells are a major advance in personalized cancer treatment, demonstrating promising outcomes in relapsed/refractory pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (pALL). However, the results are based on short-term follow up, limiting their value in predicting long-term survival and leading to uncertainty about the most appropriate survival modeling method to employ. This study aimed to address these limitations by means of expert elicitation.MethodsAn expert elicitation method, the histogram technique, was employed. A predefined discrete numerical scale was presented in Microsoft Excel® and the expert was asked to place twenty crosses on a frequency chart. These crosses represented the expert's beliefs about the distribution of particular quantities. Each cross represented five percent of the probabilistic distribution. Individual distributions were then aggregated across experts using linear pooling.ResultsA total of seventeen experts were invited to take part; eight agreed to participate and five completed the exercise. Three experts did not consider tisagenlecleucel to be a “curative” therapy because patients had a higher risk of death, compared with the age- and sex-matched general population. The aggregated distributions indicated the five-year overall survival rate to be thirty-three percent (95% CI 8.65–56.88) in patients who do not receive a subsequent stem cell transplant and twenty percent (95% CI 2.38 -52.04) in those who do.ConclusionsThe results of this study will be used to calibrate CD19 CAR T-cell therapy survival estimates presented in HTA submissions to the NCPE to ensure more robust assessments. They will also be used to inform the construction of a de novo cost-utility model for examining the cost effectiveness of CD19 CAR T-cell therapies for relapsed/refractory pALL in the Irish healthcare setting.


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