Coordinated Speed Control Strategy for Minimizing Energy Consumption of a Shearer in Fully Mechanized Mining

As one of the major pieces of equipment in fully mechanized coal mining, the drum shearer plays a critical role in improving the efficiency and energy utilization in the coal mining production process. In this paper, an energy consumption model of a shearer, derived from the analysis of the cutting and traction resistances on the shearer during different processes within a working cycle, is established. Based on the derived model, control and coordination strategies between the two speeds are proposed to minimize the shearer’s energy consumption in unidirectional mining. The case study of a real coal mine shows that the proposed models are valid, and the optimal control of shearer speeds can effectively reduce the energy consumption by 5.16% in a working cycle. To gain further insights into the impact of traction speed and drum rotational speed on the shearer’s energy consumption, several speed coordination cases are employed to further compare with the optimized one. Our study results show that the energy consumption of a shearer can be decreased with the increase of traction speed while decreasing drum rotational speed in coordination.