A major goal for Australian longwall automation is for all original equipment manufacturers to have their longwall equipment fully interoperable: in short, LASC compliance.

Once this is achieved it will be possible for all LASC-certified automation equipment to be used interchangeably, despite the different automation hardware and software solutions used by each OEM to drive their gear.

CSIRO senior research engineer Dr Mark Dunn said this would allow all the differently engineered devices to essentially be “plug and play”

Under such a scenario, a minesite could potentially use a shearer supplied by one OEM, an AFC from another and powered roof supports from a third OEM in one automated longwall set-up – and have the whole system immediately interoperable.

There are two levels of LASC compliance and Eickhoff achieved Level 1 compliance for its shearer controller last month.

The first level of compliance, which is expected to be the hardest to obtain, ensures that the communications technology of the device meets core LASC requirements.

The second-level certification refines the Ethernet Industrial Protocol communications backbone for the specific type of device.

Three different types of Level 2 LASC certification are available – for the shearer controller, powered roof supports and the Shearer Position Measurement System (the shearer’s navigation system).

With longwall equipment tenders already including clauses that specify LASC compliance, OEMs with big markets in Australia must hop onboard.

Challenges posed by the certification process

To assist both the OEMs and minesite to achieve LASC compliance, Dunn developed an LASC Compliance software testing suite.

Once plugged into the longwall communications system, the software automatically performs about 200 core validation tests in about five minutes.

All of the tests must pass for the device to get Level 1 compliance. Minesites can also use the testing suite to verify that the automated equipment they have purchased meets LASC standards.

The suite has proven particularly useful. For example, a few minor glitches surfaced during the recent testing of Eickhoff’s shearer controller.

“There were some time-out issues that weren’t causing problems currently in any of the Eickhoff applications at the moment, but given the right set of circumstances and the right set of other devices, they may have caused other problems,” Dunn told ILN.

“So it’s those little things that we are identifying and resolving – their device communication protocols, for example – so we can be sure that once we have got all the devices talking together we are not going to strike any unknown issues.”

Dunn flew over to Germany to help Eickhoff’s technicians clear some of the hurdles.

Eickhoff automation and projects engineer Stephen Douglas said the main problems related to getting uniformity in the communications protocols used between the LASC specifications and what was already in the OEM’s proprietary software.

This created some debugging work for Eickhoff’s software engineers.

With the first level of compliance for the shearer controller obtained, Douglas expects gaining the second level to be more of a “formality”

Future developments

Douglas said LASC and CSIRO would move automated component and sensor technology into the realm of “seam detection”

“That in itself is going to be a big challenge,” he said. “In other words, what we are saying now is that we can provide certain inputs to the shearer and the shearer will react on it, it will respond and it will respond accurately.

“What we want to do now is look at ways where the shearer can detect where the seam is and stay in that seam without the actual input being made.”

He said seam detection could be a couple of years away.

While there are still some horizon control issues which longwall automation needs to overcome, Douglas said that in general, far less manual correcting shears needed to be applied in Queensland mines where there was a flat, stable floor, while some of the mines in New South Wales had a lot of instability in this regard.

“Your conditions on the face really determine how many corrections you make so whether you make plenty of corrections or whether you do little corrections is all depending on the environment.”

CSIRO is actively developing and evaluating means to provide real-time shearer horizon control.

“These systems will be LASC compliant from the get-go, meaning they will interoperate with any existing LASC-compliant shearer configuration,” Dunn said.

Wireless technology

The creation of LASC stemmed from an Australian Coal Association Research Program project back in 1999, when wireless communications underground were not available. Wireless Ethernet communication to the shearer was demonstrated in the early stages of the ACARP longwall automation project.

While LASC requirements refer to a wired connection, Dunn has observed that wireless technology is becoming prevalent underground.

He did not foresee any difficulties in using LASC specifications to cover wireless communications.

Douglas said Eickhoff was already in a process where it could have wireless communication between the LASC protocols and its shearer controller.

But the focus was to have the wireless option as part of a redundant system to fall back on if there was a problem with the hard-wire Ethernet communications between the components.

“With wireless communication there is a lot of fluctuation that occurs especially in the underground environment, with the equipment you need to have some stability,” he said.

“At this stage there is a lot of work that needs to be done in that area.”

LASC testing suite

Minesites and OEMs can seek further information on the testing tools and documentation at: www.lascautomation.com/lasc-compliance.html