1. Abstract
Recently, the focus in underground longwall coal mining has been on increasing the installed motor power of shearer loaders and armored face conveyors (AFC) ,more sophisticated support control systems and longer face length , in order to reduce costs and achieve higher productivity .These efforts have resulted in higher output and previously unseen face advance rates. The trend towards “bigger and better ” equipment and layout schemes, however, is rapidly nearing the limitations of technical and economical feasibility. To realize further productivity increases, organizational changes of longwall mining procedures looks like the only reasonable answer. The benefits of opti-mised shearer sequences, leading to better performance, are discussed in this paper.
