Development Of Self Advancing Support For Upper Face In Longwall Slicing System At Miike Colliery

Miike Colliery of Mitsui Coal Mining Company, the biggest and oldest coal mine in Japan, is producing a quarter of the national coal production, about 5.2 million tons of clean coal annually and almost a half of which is now being mined under the "slicing Mining System". The slicing system is a mining method to mine a thick coal seam dividing it into two faces, upper and lower. Its history started nearly 20 years ago. However, the all-around modernization of this system has made little progress up to recent years, while mining methods for single longwall faces has made a remarkable progress together with the improvements in mining machineries, self advancing supports and so on. The reason was that the tremendous difference in adaptabilities of mechanized face equipments existing between the upper and lower faces has made it very difficult to increase the total production capacity of slicing system. After our persistent study for seventeen years, we have recently realized successfully the quite satisfactory slicing system, applying the combination of shield type self advancing supports and double ranging drum cutter at both faces. We are now fully convinced of that the high efficient, quite safe and improved slicing system has been basically established for the present. This paper intends to brief the transition on the combination of self advancing supports and mining machines, its results and further to detail the development of shield type self advancing support for upper face and artificial roof material which shall be the key point to be successful in full mechanization of slicing faces.