Digital Commons Network^™

Reply To Murray-Wallace Et Al. (2013): Comments On A Paper By Slee Et Al. (2012). A Reassessment Of Last Interglacial Deposits At Mary Ann Bay, Tasmania, P D. Mcintosh, D M. Price, S Grove, A J. Slee

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

We note that Murray-Wallace et al. (2013), in their comments above and in their original articles (see references in Slee et al. 2012), provide no detailed stratigraphic column or location for their observations or photographs so it is difficult to relate some of their arguments and observations to our described section. Before sampling, we examined the Mary Ann Bay exposure. At the eastern end of the site (Slee et al., 2012, Figure 2) were slumped deposits with concentrations of reworked shells in greater quantity than were found in undisturbed parts of the section. We avoided these areas when sampling and …

Analysis Of The Macquarie Monorail System In Development Of Gate Roads At Mandalong Mine, Braedon Smith, Paul Hagan

Resource Operators Conference

Gate road development lies on the critical path in the longwall production process. To address this issue industry has invested substantial resources in developing technologies such as continuous haulage and bolting cycle automation. There has been limited focus on improvement of ancillary development processes and technologies such as the provision of face and panel services and the panel advance process. A monorail system has been in use for some years at Mandalong Mine near Lake Macquarie in N.S.W. The Macquarie Monorail system is an integrated gate road development services unit and differs from many existing monorail units employed in underground …

Opportunity For Re-Entry Into A Coal Mine Immediately Following An Explosion, Darren Brady, David Cliff

Resource Operators Conference

Following an explosion in a coal mine commentators within and outside the underground coal mining industry often make comment that the best time to enter the mine is immediately following the initial explosion. These comments often lead to the questioning of the action or lack of; if mines rescue services do not re-enter the mine. The concept that there is a “window of opportunity” to enter a mine immediately following an explosion is based largely on the assumption that the fuel (mainly methane seam gas) required for an explosion has been consumed by the initial explosion and will take time …

Proceedings Of The 2012 Coal Operators' Conference, Naj Aziz, Bob Kininmonth, Jan Nemcik, Ting Ren

Resource Operators Conference

Proceedings of the 2012 Coal Operators' Conference. All papers in these proceedings are peer reviewed. ISBN: 978 1 921522 57 4.

Investigation Of Spontaneous Heating Zones And Proactive Inertisation Of Longwall Goaf In Fenguangshan Mine, Ting Ren, Zhongwei Wang, Jan Nemcik, Naj Aziz, Jianming Wu

Resource Operators Conference

To understand the spatial distribution of spontaneous combustion zones under a Y ventilation scheme, field tests and numerical modelling studies were carried out on a longwall face in Fenghuangshan mine. Computational fluid dynamics models were developed and base model results validated using tube bundle gas monitoring data. A three dimensional high oxygen concentration zone where spontaneous combustion was most likely to occur was predicted behind the longwall face. Parametric studies were conducted to develop proactive goaf inertisation strategies to minimise the spontaneous combustion zones. Results indicated that effective goaf inertisation can be achieved by injecting inert gas on the belt …

Application Of A Numerical Model For Outburst Prediction, Control And Management, Xavier S.K Choi

Resource Operators Conference

The basic underlying mechanism for outburst initiation involves the expulsion of coal at a pressure gradient above a critical value which is directly related to the strength and porosity of the coal at the current state, and the composition (degree of gas saturation) of the pore fluid. Coal strength, porosity, stress, gas pressure and pressure gradient are important for outburst initiation. Permeability and rate of desorption can be important for outburst evolution by controlling the amount of gas that would become available to drive an outburst. The severity of an outburst depends on gas pressure, the hydrodynamic force, the strength …

Patient Outcomes In Palliative Care, Report 13 (January - June 2012) - Queensland, Sonia Bird, Samuel F. Allingham, Malcolm R. Masso, Maree Banfield

Australian Health Services Research Institute

PCOC aims to assist services to improve the quality of the palliative care they provide through the analysis and benchmarking of patient outcomes. In this, the thirteenth PCOC report, data submitted for the January - June 2012 period are summarised and patient outcomes benchmarked to enable participating services to assess their performance and identify areas in which they may improve. This report is broken into four sections:

Section 1 provides a summary of the data included in this report.

Section 2 summarises each of the four outcome measures and presents national benchmarking results for a selection of these measures.

Section …

Comments On Slee Et Al. (2012). A Reassessment Of Last Interglacial Deposits At Mary Ann Bay, Tasmania. Quaternary Australasia 29: 4-11, Colin V. Murray-Wallace, Eric A. Colhoun, Albert Goede, Patrick G. Quilty

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

It is always pleasing to see additional work undertaken on sedimentary successions that are critical to the understanding of Quaternary environmental changes. The deposits at Mary Ann Bay, as with other last interglacial (MIS 5e; 128-118 ka) coastal-marine successions in Tasmania, are critical for demonstrating that the region has experienced a different relative sea-level history to mainland southeastern Australia, and that parts of Tasmania have been uplifted by 16-17 m since the last interglacial maximum. Unfortunately, the recently published paper by Slee et al. (2012) gives credence to two thermoluminescence (TL) ages which must be inaccurate. In uncritically accepting the …

2011-2012 Fellows Exhibition, Etienne Turpin

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Stainlessness recuperates the tradition of the architectural 'capriccio' as a means to emphasize the history of labor movements in North America and to make legible the physical semblance of these movements in cities including Sudbury, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. While processes of urbanization have all but erased these struggles from our cities and left only ambivalent monuments to mark the past, the narrative of Stainlessness and its contemporary 'capriccios' assert the centrality of labor as a force capable of transforming the nature of cities, the culture of America, and the geologic deep-time marked by the Anthropocene.

Petro-Market Civilization. (20 November, 2012), Timothy Dimuzio

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Prologue: The Rule of Threes

Lending weight to the popular saying that bad things always come in threes, three events in April of 2010 underscored the level of capitalist civilization’s addiction to carbon energy. On the 3rd of April off the coast of north eastern Australia, the Shen Neng 1, a Chinese owned coal tanker hauling 68,000 tons of coal collided into the Great Barrier Reef – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – at full speed. The impact ripped the ship’s haul, leaked three to four tons of the worst quality fuel oil into one of the world’s most fragile …

Back Analysis Of Roof Classification And Roof Support Systems At Kestrel North, Sabine Stam, Glen Guy, Nick Gordon

Resource Operators Conference

Kestrel Mine is a Rio Tinto owned underground longwall operation that mines the German Creek coal seam in Queensland‟s Bowen Basin. Kestrel Mine can be separated into two parts North and South. Kestrel North has been in operation since 1990 (called Gordonstone at the time) while Kestrel South is a comparatively new mine having begun in-seam development in the first quarter of 2011. Over the recent history of Kestrel North several methodologies have been employed to characterise the roof and floor conditions, with a view to optimising the roof support design system and process. The objective of this study was …

Benchmarking Continuous Haulage, Allison Golsby

Resource Operators Conference

Continuous haulage systems have not always presented a satisfactory operational experience for hard rock or coal miners. Not all mines have used continuous haulage. Some mines presently use one of the continuous haulage systems. Some have tried and abandoned continuous haulage. Yet, continuous haulage offers considerable benefits, which are not always realized. However, there is now a resurgence of interest in these systems as coal mines seek to improve gate road development rates. As most market players are very reluctant to publish information, benchmarking continuous haulage systems can be difficult. This is to the detriment of the industry as a …

Physical Scale Modelling Of Roadway Advance With Wedge Cut Blasting For South Wing Rail At Tunliu Mine, Y. Q. Yu, Hani S. Mitri

Resource Operators Conference

Blasting with wedge cut is the key to the efficiency of roadway excavation in coal mines, particularly where the rock face is highly laminated. The quality of the wedge cuts can directly affect blasting results. A series of model experiments were carried out in the Blasting Laboratory of Henan Polytechnique University, China, in order to improve the quality of wedge cuts and increase roadway development rates in the South Wing rail of Tunliu mine. Three groups of twelve wedge cut model experiments were conducted, which showed that the wedge cutting boreholes angle can affect the depth and volume of blasted …

Mining Gassy Coals, Ian Gray

Resource Operators Conference

This paper reviews the basic factors and practice of mining gassy coals worldwide. It then suggests how changes need to be made to Australian mining methods to deal with the challenges of mining deeper and gassier coals.

Permeability Testing Of Coal Under Different Triaxial Conditions, Lei Zhang, N. Aziz, Ting Ren, Jan Nemcik, Zhongwei Wang

Resource Operators Conference

Permeability refers to the ability of coal to transmit gas when a pressure or concentration gradient exists across it. The permeability of coal is dependent upon factors that include effective stress, gas pressure, water content, disturbance associated with drilling and matrix swelling/shrinkage due to adsorption/desorption. A programme of laboratory tests were conducted on coal samples from the Bulli seam for evaluating the permeability and drainability of coal. The study was conducted using two different types of permeability apparatus. The methods of permeability testing of coal under different triaxial conditions are discussed. Permeability testing of the Bulli seam coal sample with …

Radon Measuring To Detect Coal Spontaneous Combustion Fire Source At Bulianta Mine, Shendong, Jianming Wu, Yuguo Wu, Junfeng Wang, Chunshan Zhou

Resource Operators Conference

The paper introduces the theory of using radon to detect the source of coal fires resulting from spontaneous combustion and its successful application at the No.12405 gob area in Bulianta Mine, Shendong. The practice shows that this method provides the scientific basis for coal seam spontaneous combustion control plan-making. It is a key technology and can be applicable for wide applications.

Riskgate: Promoting And Redefining Best Practice For Risk Management In The Australian Coal Industry, Philipp Kirsch, Sarah Goater, Jill Harris, Darren Sprott, Jim Joy

Resource Operators Conference

RISKGATE, an ACARP funded initiative, is an interactive online risk management system designed to assist in the analysis of priority unwanted events unique to the Australian coal mining industry. The system is innovative in that it is built upon a foundation of expert knowledge gathered through action research workshops, further supported by a substantive and diverse array of industry, academic and technological resources. In operation, RISKGATE offers an innovative tool to assist industry partners and regulators alike in the design, management and reporting of organisational and regulatory compliance requirements. In practice, RISKGATE provides a continuum for knowledge transfer and redefining …

Pike River Mine Re-Entry And Emergency Mine Re-Entry Guidelines Application And Learnings, Geoffrey Nugent, Darren Brady, David Cliff, Seamus Devlin

Resource Operators Conference

Prior to the Pike River Mine Disaster the Queensland Mines Rescue Service and The NSW Mines Rescue Service undertook a project to develop a guideline and a practical prototype software tool to demonstrate how decision makers could be better assisted during a mine emergency which required re-entry to the mine by competent mines rescue trained personnel. The research and development of the prototype software tool (funded through ACARP grant C19010) coincided with the unfortunate events at Pike River Mine on and after the 19th November 2010. This paper will discuss the relationship between this project‟s outcomes and the re-entry strategy …

Truck-Shovel Fleet Cycle Optimisation Using Gps Collision Avoidance System, Benjamin Knights, Mehmet Kizil, Warren Seib

Resource Operators Conference

Truck-Shovel operations in surface mines involve high costs. Fleet management systems can provide a tool to improve fleet availability, utilisation and productivity, thereby reducing those costs. However, these systems are expensive to install. Stop-Watch time and motion studies provide a cheaper alternative. They can be undertaken on any segment of the haul cycle to provide accurate timing data, as well as observations on operator performance but are very time consuming and do not provide continuous monitoring of a fleet. This paper provides an analysis of an alternative option; using a GPS collision avoidance system for truck-shovel fleet cycle optimisation. A …

Quality Assurance Programs For Management Excellence. Are They Relevant To The Coal Industry?, Allison Golsby

Resource Operators Conference

Quality assurance programs were introduced into industry in 1973. Over time these systems have evolved to what is available to management today. How can quality assurance programs be used to ensure management excellence and are they relevant to the Coal Mining Industry?

Pcoc National Report On Patient Outcomes In Palliative Care In Australia January - June 2012, Sonia Bird, Samuel F. Allingham, Malcolm R. Masso, Maree Banfield

Australian Health Services Research Institute

PCOC aims to assist services to improve the quality of the palliative care they provide through the analysis and benchmarking of patient outcomes. In this, the thirteenth PCOC report, data submitted for the January - June 2012 period are summarised and patient outcomes benchmarked to enable participating services to assess their performance and identify areas in which they may improve.

This report is broken into four sections:

Section 1 provides a summary of the data included in this report.

Section 2 summarises each of the four outcome measures and presents national benchmarking results for a selection of these measures.

Section …

Patient Outcomes In Palliative Care, Report 13 (January - June 2012) - Western Australia, Sonia Bird, Samuel F. Allingham, Malcolm R. Masso, Maree Banfield

Australian Health Services Research Institute

PCOC aims to assist services to improve the quality of the palliative care they provide through the analysis and benchmarking of patient outcomes. In this, the thirteenth PCOC report, data submitted for the January - June 2012 period are summarised and patient outcomes benchmarked to enable participating services to assess their performance and identify areas in which they may improve.

This report is broken into four sections:

Section 1 provides a summary of the data included in this report.

Section 2 summarises each of the four outcome measures and presents national benchmarking results for a selection of these measures.

Section …

Patient Outcomes In Palliative Care, Report 13 (January - June 2012) - Victoria, Sonia Bird, Samuel F. Allingham, Malcolm R. Masso, Maree Banfield

Australian Health Services Research Institute

PCOC aims to assist services to improve the quality of the palliative care they provide through the analysis and benchmarking of patient outcomes. In this, the thirteenth PCOC report, data submitted for the January - June 2012 period are summarised and patient outcomes benchmarked to enable participating services to assess their performance and identify areas in which they may improve.

This report is broken into four sections:

Section 1 provides a summary of the data included in this report.

Section 2 summarises each of the four outcome measures and presents national benchmarking results for a selection of these measures.

Section …

Patient Outcomes In Palliative Care, Report 13 (January - June 2012) - South Australia, Sonia Bird, Samuel F. Allingham, Malcolm R. Masso, Maree Banfield

Australian Health Services Research Institute

PCOC aims to assist services to improve the quality of the palliative care they provide through the analysis and benchmarking of patient outcomes. In this, the thirteenth PCOC report, data submitted for the January - June 2012 period are summarised and patient outcomes benchmarked to enable participating services to assess their performance and identify areas in which they may improve.

This report is broken into four sections:

Section 1 provides a summary of the data included in this report.

Section 2 summarises each of the four outcome measures and presents national benchmarking results for a selection of these measures.

Section …

The 2012 Ar-Drg Classification System Development Program, Jennifer P. Mcnamee

Australian Health Services Research Institute

Powerpoint presentation presented at HIMAA 2012 National Conference, Gold Coast, Qld.

Application Of A Transversely Isotropic Brittle Rock Mass Model In Roof Support Design, David A. F. Oliveira

Resource Operators Conference

Accurate modelling of the potential failure modes in the rock mass is an essential task towards a robust design of roof support systems in coal mines. The use of generalised rock mass properties based on averaged properties (e.g. Hoek-Brown model) has been found to limit the capability to reproduce the actual rock mass behaviour which may include a wide range of interacting and complex failure mechanisms such as shear and tension fracturing of the intact rock and shear and separation of pre-existing discontinuities, including re-activation. Recent studies have also shown that traditional models, such as the Mohr-Coulomb, may not accurately …

The Strength Of The Pillar-Floor System, Ross Seedsman

Resource Operators Conference

The strength of the roof/pillar/floor system is controlled by the component with the lowest strength. In some coal seams the floor can be the weakest component and in these situations bearing capacity concepts drawn from foundation engineering can be applied. The low strength floors tend to be clay-rich and can be analysed as behaving in an undrained state (effective friction angle equals zero). A simple thin-layer bearing capacity equation has been found to correctly identify problematic low strength floors. The input variables are the unconfined compressive strength of the layer, its thickness, and the width of the pillar. All reported …

Thermal Infrared-Based Seam Tracking For Intelligent Longwall Shearer Horizon Control, Jonathon C. Ralston, Andrew D. Strange

Resource Operators Conference

Longwall mining remains one of the most efficient methods for underground coal recovery. A key aspect in achieving safe and productive longwall operations relies on maintaining the shearer in an optimal position for extraction within the coal seam. The typical approach to this resource identification issue is labour intensive so is subject to safety and productivity drawbacks. As a solution, this paper describes the use of thermal infrared-based sensing to provide a means to automatically measure the vertical position of the mining machine with respect to the coal seam. This is achieved by identifying and tracking non-optically visible horizontal line-like …

Early Warning Of Longwall Roof Cavities Using Lva Software, David Hoyer

Resource Operators Conference

It is shown that by monitoring longwall leg pressures in real time, warning can be given for significant weighting events and the formation of roof instabilities, such as roof cavities, several hours in advance. Longwall Visual Analysis (LVA) is a software package that continuously monitors shield pressures and shearer position in longwall mines. LVA has been running on 22 Australian longwalls for up to five years, and as a result a very substantial database of shield pressure trends in a wide range of longwall situations has been collected. This database has been analysed to develop indicators that will give operators …

Experimental Protocol For Stress Corrosion Cracking Of Rockbolts, Damon Vandermaat, Elias Elias, Peter Craig, Serkan Saydam, Alan Crosky, Paul Hagan, Bruce Hebblewhite

Resource Operators Conference

A new laboratory facility designed and constructed at the University of New South Wales, aims to continue and offer a new approach to researching the phenomenon of the stress corrosion cracking. This new approach includes the use of full sized specimens, a specially designed frame, as well as a new loading regime, known as the Periodically Increasing Stress Test, to closely simulate the loading encountered by bolts in service. Coupled with a detailed water testing program to be undertaken at a number of partner sites, this new approach hopes to further increase understanding of stress corrosion cracking and its causes.