Longwall armoured face conveyors (AFC) have traditionally been designed with the use of a combination of heuristics and simple models. However, as longwalls increase in length these design procedures are proving to be inadequate. The result has been either costly loss of production due to stalling of the AFC, or component failure, or larger capital investment than necessary due to overdesign. To allow accurate estimation of the power requirements for an AFC a comprehensive model has been developed of all the friction forces associated with the AFC. Predictions of power requirements obtained from this model are compared with measurements from two mine faces.
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