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To reduce fatalities resulting from personnel falling into voids formed above feeders in coal piles, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health at the Spokane Research Laboratory established a project to monitor coal surge piles to detect the formation of voids. A resistivity imaging method has been developed by GECOH Exploration, of Lexington, KY, in which a geophysical technique known as vertical electrical sounding (VES) is used to scan for these voids. VES operates by measuring the electrical field produced by a current in the ground at the bottom of the coal pile. This paper summarizes the results obtained from a field-scale test and shows that mapping voids within a coal pile is possible.
| Author(s): | Rodriguez-R, Rodriguez-H, Lhamond-M, Johnson-JC, Iverson-SR |
| Reference: | NARMS-TAC 2002, "Mining and Tunnelling Innovation and Opportunity," Proceedings of the 5th American Rock Mechanics Symposium and the 17th Tunnelling Association of Canada Conference, July 7-10, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hammah R, Bawden W, Curran J, Telesnicki M, eds., Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2002 Jul; 1:415-419 |
fsvdi (PDF, 822 KB)
