Identification of Vulnerable Sub-Systems for Continuous Miner-Based Underground Coal Mine Operation: A Reliability Analysis

In India, mining is one of the major activities contributing to significant revenue generation. Mining activity in India includes mining of ores, coal and other minerals. India is one of the global leaders in terms of coal production, specifically producing through opencast mining. Recent environmental conditions and regulations are forcing the government to think of some effective underground mining technologies, such as longwall and Continuous Miner (CM). This research work presents the case of a CM system installed in an underground coal mine in the eastern region of the country. In Working time as well as breakdown time data were recorded for three months to calculate the Time Between Failure (TBF) between two consecutive failures. Thereafter, a reliability analysis for thousands of minutes of operating period for the CM-based sub-systems was performed. Among the sub-systems considered, a thorough analysis revealed that, mine conveyor was the most vulnerable sub-system. Further, to lessen the vulnerability of the top three sub-systems, several corrective measures were recommended.