Health and safety analysis on support walls. Volume I. Open file report (final)

This report documents support wall equipment and material characteristics, dimensions, and power and site requirements in underground mines. The report provides labor requirements data and identifies the health and safety issues associated with support wall use and construction. Potential applications for support walls such as advancing and retreating long-wall single entry, room-and-pillar, mains and submains, and stoppings are delineated and an economic assessment is presented of the viability of employing support wall technology to increase the recovery rate on retreating longwalls, or to employ advancing longwall in deeply lying seams or difficult conditions. The sensitivity of mining costs to changes in key support wall parameters is also presented.