A preliminary study on selected methods of modeling the effect of shearer operation on methane propagation and ventilation at longwalls

Abstract Underground coal mining frequently uses longwalls. The occurrence of a potentially explosive mixture of methane and air is one of the most serious hazards. A large number of papers have applied numerical modeling of methane propagation in research aimed at this problem. To date, none of the CFD simulations has considered the movement of the shearer in the analyses. This paper proposes an adaptation of a method used for the description of the movement of trains in tunnels to a specific geometry of a longwall district. The flow of the air-methane mixture was calculated using the finite volume method, in particular the k-w SST and SAS turbulence models. Due to the movement of the shearer, moving and deforming meshes were used for simulation of unsteady flows. Examples of solutions for two hypothetical cases are presented. Finally, the drawbacks and advantages of presented methods are discussed. Further development with the application of either local mesh variability or overset meshes is outlined.