Slow Loading Yielding Prop for Underground Mines - An Invention

Abstract

In general, underground mine/tunnels/roadways are supported especially in India, by using wooden cogs/props as support in addition to the massive use of roof bolting. But as wood is becoming scarce, there is need for suitable alternative supports to replace timbers in mines. Keeping in mind the Indian mining condition the support should be of greater longevity, light enough for easy portability and requiring less maintenance. Further, it should have facilities for height variation, sufficient yielding, continuous load monitoring and releasing remotely as the coal seam thickness varies widely in Indian mines. Then, the support material must be easily available and should have ease in operation by even an unskilled worker. Finally, the device must be economically viable for Indian mines, which is thriving for its longer life and should provide safety for miners. In this direction several efforts have been made to design such slow loading yielding props to meet all these requirements. After numerous attempts such innovative prop consisting of multiple disc springs has been designed and developed at CSIR-CIMFR of which the details description has been discussed in this paper.