Determining Factors Affecting Thermal Comfort in Underground Coal Mine
Authors
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Doctoral Scholar; (Mining) Dept. of Mining Engineering. IIEST Shibpur ,IN
Shibaji Dey -
Doctoral Scholar; and Prof. (Dr.) Netai Chandra Dey, Professor (Mining) Dept. of Mining Engineering. IIEST Shibpur ,INNetai Chandra Dey
Keywords:
Underground mine; thermal comfort; predicted mean vote (PMV); predicted per cent of dissatisfied (PPD); wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT).Abstract
Thermal comfort in underground mining is one of the important factors in daily mining operations so does its monitoring and measurement. In Indian mining condition very insignificant research investigations have been done, therefore, for better productive mines, determination of thermal comfort is necessary. Thermal stress along with its comfort factors has been taken into consideration for this study. Two different thermal comfort indices i.e. predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted per cent of dissatisfied (PPD) are fixed as the indicators of thermal comfort. Total 20 participants were taken for the study to assess the thermal comfort during their regular mining shift hours. Correlation statistics is also applied for finding out the interrelationship between PMV, PPD, and different thermal comfort factors. The result shows several positive and negative correlation score of low to medium for most of the thermal stress factors. Among those, few factors are found with very strong correlation. A positive correlation between PMV and heat generation due to metabolism (r = 0.99) has been found while strong negative correlations between PMV vs. heat exchange by convection in breathing(r=–0.88) and evaporative heat exchange in breathing(r=–0.99) have been identified. It can be concluded that not a few but several factors are responsible for alteration in thermal comfort. It is also found from mine A (r=0.60) and Mine B (r=0.53) data set that the PMV and PPD have a medium strong correlation. Identification of thermal comfort factors is important to frame appropriate workload and a proper thermal comfort model for workers.
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