Coal-Rock Interface Sensing Technology Applied for Horizon Control of Mining Shearers

Horizon control of shearer is the bottleneck to realize automation for underground coal mining operations, the shearer had better have the ability to detect the coal horizon on each pass to set the preferred cutting height. The detection of coal-rock interface determines directly the solution of the problem, due to many deficiencies in existed detection ways such as mechanical, nucleonic, and vibrating on drum, electromagnetic detecting. The real time/reliability and widely application demands make corresponding those existed sensors unsatisfied. Analyze the restriction and advantage of several identification technologies, propose the acoustic wave detection, discribe and discuss the installation position of sensors.