Mineshafts and Tunnels
Mineshafts
Shafts are the lifeline to underground mines, and miners depend on safe, uninterrupted and efficient flow of material. The shaft and hoisting system provide access to a network of openings used to recover the underground resource, provide vertical transportation of miners and materials, and serve as an escape route in case of emergency. In addition, the shafts assist in mine ventilation and supply of engineering services underground (power, compressed air, water, cooling conduit etc.). Hoisting accidents resulting in injury are relatively uncommon, but all hoisting accidents have a potential to be catastrophic.
A mineshaft has huge lift elevators that can travel the speed of heavy-duty conveyances (skips and cages with weight of up to 50 tonnes) reaching 10-20 m/sec. The possible damage as a result of guides deflections and/or misalignment can be quite substantial. The latter can be caused by different things: shaft lining movement due to rock pressure or even rock support failure; corrosion of buntons (struts reinforcing the walls of a shaft and dividing it into vertical compartments) or the guides themselves; mechanical damage of steelworks due to the rock falls; as well as dynamic interaction between the conveyances and the conveyance guiding system.
As a result, mining legislation may require a thorough shaft visual inspection once a week with shaft profiling (special survey) normally taking place once a year. The main reason for the shaft survey and inspection is safety and continuity of operations.
Tunnels
Similarly to mineshafts, TITAN’s world-class positioning solution enables the system to effectively map tunnels up to a mile in length without having a GPS signal. Repeat passes through the tunnel result in a high point density solution, all without the disruption of traffic or risk to the crew. TITAN is a highly effective method of acquiring engineering grade data sets from these important but difficult to survey features.
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Mineshaft and Rail Tunnel
TITAN® Variants recommended:
TITAN Underground is a unique configuration of the TITAN technology. It enables the fast and accurate collection of survey data in vertical mine shafts to confirm their alignment for safety purposes. The Ambercore core scanning technology is combined with a unique positioning solution to accomplish these surveys. This same solution can also be applied to horizontal tunnels in mines, rail lines and roads.
This system provides a fast and highly accurate method of surveying deep vertical mine shafts in major underground mines. These shafts need to be surveyed when built and periodically thereafter. The current methods of shaft surveying are very time consuming and expensive; surveying using the TITAN solution can be done at the speed of hoisting, which is minimal. This system is unique in that it achieves its geographic positioning using a target based method without the use of GPS. This system also provides a solution for horizontal tunnels in mines, highways and railroads where traditional survey techniques are costly and disruptive.
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Mobile Survey of a Road Tunnel
