Development of integrated roof monitoring system and continuous miner working index for improving mine safety

: Roof falls are the major catastrophes that occur in the underground coal mines and these falls have a serious impact on workmen in terms of injuries, fatality, and interruptions of production. Hence continuous monitoring of roof convergence is important to predict roof fall. A suitable monitoring system for roof convergence may be installed in underground mines to mitigate problems associated with roof falls. This paper explains the development of a new real-time integrated roof monitoring system based on an ultrasonic distance measurement sensor that has been deployed in the continuous miner workings for the measurement of roof convergence. The roof convergence data is processed to develop the continuous miner working index (CMWI) using statistical techniques and CMWI is very useful for predicting roof convergence in continuous miner workings to improve the safety of operations.