Vibrational energy transmission in underground continuous mining: Dynamic characteristics and experimental research of field data

Respirable dust exposure is a serious health and safety risk for coal mine workers, with the potential for disabling and fatal conditions. Airborne dust particle concentrations must be reduced through new methods of filtration or capture to reduce this risk, and most mining jurisdictions have legal requirements for respirable dust exposure. As this research area receives growing attention, there is an increased need for fully coupled model development and experiments based on field data to quantify the filtering characteristics, with a focus on the scrubber-mesh system and continuous miner machine. Our previous research has demonstrated that vibrating mesh screens can improve dust collection efficiency. While the vibrating mesh approach has been demonstrated to be effective, the main technical challenge is determining how to provide vibration to the scrubber mesh screen at specific frequency and amplitude levels. We present a novel approach to improving dust filtration by transmission of mechanical vibrations generated by the continuous miner machine during coal mining to the mesh filter. The study's specific goal is to harvest natural vibrations inherent in underground mining equipment and translate them to levels suitable for optimal vibration of the mesh panel. The study first collects vibration data from an underground coal mine's operating continuous miner and analyzes it to identify the most stable vibration spectrums that can be used as an input to the energy transmission system. Multiphysics modeling, based on three-phase computation fluid dynamics, is presented that uses resonance condition to harvest operational vibrations of the continuous miner. Resonance occurs when the natural frequency of the scrubber-mesh system matches the continuous miner's vibration frequency, significantly increasing the amplitude of scrubber-mesh vibrations. The study intends to use this energy transmission system to improve the dust collection efficiency of the flooded-bed dust scrubber, reduce clogging, and reduce the need for frequent panel replacements. Our findings indicate that vibration resonance-based energy transmission is a promising technique for significantly improving the dust collection efficiency of flooded-bed mesh scrubbers, with important implications for the development of self-powered and sustainable systems. This novel approach has significant implications for mining industry occupational health and safety.