Held at the University of Wollongong February 12-14, the Conference attracted well over 100 delegates mainly from Queensland and NSW. Also attending were delegates from the USA, Germany, and NZ.

The conference was preceded by a half-day workshop on mine subsidence, which was well attended. A separate report on issues arising from the workshop will be written by Ross Seedman, of Seedsman geotechnics, who convened the workshop.

“The Underground Coal Operators conference has now been recognised as Australia’s only forum for the regular exchange of ideas between mine operators, engineers and researchers in underground coal mining,” organisers said.

Past conferences have addressed a variety of issues in addition to Ground Control. Two keynote address and 24 technical papers were presented during the two-day conference.

Rob Reagan, the NSW chief inspector of Mines, presented the first keynote paper on “New Regulations for Health, Safety and Subsidence” and Brian Lyne, the Queensland Chief Inspector of Coal Mines presented the second keynote talk on “Hazard Management in Longwall Installations.

The 24 technical papers, presented in eight technical sessions, dealt with a range of issues of importance to longwall mining. Barry Ward presented a paper on the use of sonic velocity logs to define potential goaf delamination horizons. The paper triggered a healthy debate on modelling and roof caving in the goaf.

Other modellings papers looked at similar issues. Chris Marks of US health and safety organization NIOSH, discussed the role of Coal Mine Roof Rating (CMRR) in mining and engineering design. John Hoelle of Moura Coal Mine covered the application of RMRR to the analysis of unsupported roof span in highwall mining. A new method of calculating the longwall powered support capacity, based on the statistical analysis of the frequency roof falls, was presented by Uwe Wyink of DMT, Germany.

There were a number of papers dealing with different aspects of mine subsidence. Chris Harvey, discussed the challenges of improving the prediction of mine subsidence. Ross Seedsman and Roger Byrnes of Seedsman Geotechnics, described case studies of influence function method of visualising surface subsidence. The importance of the impacts of mine subsidence on creeks, river valleys and gorges due to mining was presented by Arthur Waddington of Waddington and Kay.

Two academic institutions contributed five papers to the conference. There were three papers from the university of Queensland and two from Wollongong. Both papers from Wollongong University were presented by Naj Aziz and dealt with the study of the influence of bolt surface profiles on load transfer characteristics and double shearings of pre-tensioned bolt in different strength concrete medium. Andrej Atrens of Queensland University presented a paper on laboratory testing of rock bolt stress corrosion cracking, while Peter Gray of Ground Support Services, described investigations into premature rock bolt failures in the Australian coal mining industry.

The high risk management in two longwall operations described by Roger Kahler, was well appreciated because of the high quality of presentation and the world wide experience of the presenter. Ken Cram’s paper dealt with respirable dust results from Australian Longwall faces and the latest statistics on the longwall surveys. Also presented were a number of very high quality papers on the longwall environment including heat and humidity, and spontaneous combustion.

The edited papers presented in the Coal 2003 conference was printed in to a 255 pages conference proceedings which was distributed to the delegates attending the conference. The conference proceedings were edited by Naj Aziz and Bob Kininmonth. Naj Aziz was also the conference Convenor and chairman, assisted by the coal 2003 conference organising committee.

Coal 2003 Conference was the fourth in the series of underground coal operators’ conference held at the University of Wollongong. This Conference was organised by the Illawarra Branch of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, in association with The Mine Managers Association of Australia and the University of Wollongong –Mining Engineering Group.

Sponsors included BHP Billiton, The Road Services Systems and Seedsman Geotechnic.

Delegates also visited Wollongong University’s Faculty of Engineering laboratory Facilities, and inspected research and testing facilities on rock bolting, coal/gas outburst and other testing facilities on mine geomechanics.