Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2008. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 70 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-70).

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 63 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 52-53).

M.Sc. (Eng.),Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, 2012 / Mining is a sensitive business that yields high returns and at the same time is associated with high risk of injuries/fatalities and potential losses of revenue. There is increasing intolerance for injuries and fatalities by governments and the other stakeholders involved in the mining business often resulting in mine closures and revenue loss. Chief among the mining risks is the occurrence of rockfalls where people work and access. The rockfalls are bound mainly by joints that intersect the rockmass thereby forming rock blocks that may fall once an excavation has been created. There are many methods that have been used over time to predict the occurrence of rockfalls. More recently probabilistic methods have gained more ground over deterministic methods. The properties of the joints that are identifiable on exposed excavations are the main inputs used in simulating rockfalls. To date there has been little work that has been done to compare predicted rockfalls to actual rockfalls. This dissertation presents a practical method for collecting rockfall and joint data in the stope hangiwall at two mines in the Bushveld Complex. The joint data has been used in simulating rockfalls using JBlock (a probabilistic keyblock stability programme). A comparison between simulated rockfalls and mapped rockfalls has been presented. Based on this comparison, a number of iterations were done to calibrate the JBlock results until near realistic rockfalls were achieved. Three case studies have been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of different stope support systems in reducing rockfall. The potential losses and injury risk associated with the different support systems have been quantified for all the individual rockfalls. In general the rockfall frequency is directly proportional to the risks associated with the rockfalls. Through this research it has been demonstrated that it is possible to use joint data found on excavation surfaces to statistically predict the occurrence of potential rockfalls in similar ground conditions. The optimum support system that has minimum injury and cost risk can also be selected from a comparison of a number of support systems. Armed with this information, rock engineers can now make strategic decisions versus the existing common tactical approach.

A review of coal bumps. their nature. causes. prediction. prevention. and mitigation is presented. The design and construction of a borehole stressmeter is discussed. Laboratory testing. which yielded promising results of the stressmeter (inclusion) is presented along with preliminary field test results. Laboratory testing involved comparison with the results of a two-dimensional finite element model of the physical laboratory test with those of the physical test itself. Results correlated well. The results of the field test indicate the need for further research into the practical application of the solid inclusion method in the field. / Master of Science

“Mining Interruption” tackles the question of how to make sense of disaster by exploring the Soma mine disaster. On May 13, 2014, an explosion in the Eynez underground lignite coal mine caused a fire that blocked the exit, sealing in 301 mineworkers who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the town of Soma, in the city of Manisa, in Aegean Turkey. While the European Union was becoming relatively greener next door, coal extraction had begun to increase in Turkey after the Justice and Development Party [Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi] came to power in early 2000s. The relative decline of coal in the Global North paved the way for increased amounts of internal coal extraction and consumption in the energy geographies of the Global South and other non-Western countries as well as of Indigenous lands. The shift created biopolitically, socially, and technologically renewed forms of exploitation of labor, bodies, and nature, which contextualize the Soma mine disaster. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 68 open-ended interviews conducted in the Soma Coal Basin, this dissertation presents one constellation of the disaster by exploring four figures—The Accidented, the Bride, the Deserving, and the Striker—both as effects and as ongoing temporalities of the disaster. It contributes to critical disaster studies by defining and studying disaster not as a category of event, but as a concept through which multiple temporalities, lived experiences, and knowledges hang together. This loose definition of disaster is complemented by a reinterpretation of Walter Benjamin’s take on one of Bertolt Brecht’s most important dramaturgical techniques: interruption. In the dissertation, interruption is re-conceptualized as an experiential (hence temporal) concept that captures out-of-the-ordinary moments or flashes that interrupt everyday life in a way that permits a reevaluation of historical-material conditions. Interruptions are openings through which people may or may not follow an accidental course of action in order to overcome, better deal with, or politically respond to their conditions. The multiplicity of interruptions that are integral to the ongoing Soma mine disaster intersect with labor, fossil fuel production and its toxic effects, disability/debility, gendered oppression, disaster management, and social assistance. Some of these interruptions are experienced as rupturing events while others are perceived below the threshold of the event as such—as noneventful or not-so-eventful sensibilities, intensities and material changes. Each figure in question is a constellation in itself, a web of interdependencies, ruptures and materialities formed among human beings, state actors, coal, land, tobacco and other plants, limbs, organs, and names. In “The Accidented,” by examining mineworkers’ experiences and the terminology of becoming accidented (a direct translation of the term kazalanmak [in infinitive form]) through work accidents, the dissertation presents a critique both of existing disability assessment techniques and processes, and of understandings of disability as identity, which peripheralize labor-related and other experiences of (dis)ability and debility. In “The Bride,” by surveying the pervasive rumors about the widows of the 301 mineworkers, and their naming by the townspeople as “the brides,” the dissertation studies the differential treatment of the families of the 301 and the rest of the mining community through the state’s twofold disaster management strategy, and the ways in which people deal with this treatment through gossip, resentment, and kinship ties. In so doing, the dissertation also explores how affinal kinship relations have been transformed in the region due to the rise of coal mining, which coincides with the heightened neoliberalization of agriculture. In “The Deserving,” by investigating the materiality and movement of the lignite coal that is known as “Soma coal,” the dissertation articulates the ways in which the lives and desires of working-class and peasant communities have been reshaped through coercion, patronage, ideological interpellation, and the subjectivizing effects of Soma coal. It presents Soma coal as a pedagogical infrastructure that has emerged through the materiality of coal, and the regimes and networks of labor and welfare provision in contemporary Turkey. Finally, through the figure of “The Striker,” the dissertation examines the three-year long compensation struggle and protests of Soma and Ermenek mineworkers (2019–2021) as a set of emergency strikes that interrupted various processes, technologies, social networks, and modes of life that are formally and/or really subsumed within capital. The concept of “emergency strike” is used in order to encapsulate a form of strike that emerges with whatever means available in a given context, and as a collective act of seizing perceived last chances. This discussion builds on a recent wave of theorization concerning forms of unconventional strike that aim to disarticulate mechanisms and processes of real subsumption and/or state sovereignty. The dissertation shows how mineworkers organized against the backdrop of the Soma mine disaster. In doing so, it demonstrates how mineworkers re-exceptionalized their living and working conditions under a state of exception that has become the rule in Turkey since the 2016 coup attempt while it had already become the rule in the Soma Basin after May 13, 2014.

The expenditures resulting from work accidents is increasing every year. Among the other work accidents, mine accidents result important loss of time, money and lives. From the point of view of mine accidents, studies about cost of mine accidents need some contributions. In this thesis, cost of mine accidents to worker, employer, and total economy of country will be analysed in the light of data from Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Social Insurance Institution, and T&uuml / rkiye Coal Enterprises. General Analysis is carried out within all industrial sectors, Mining sector, and Coal Mining sector. Detailed analysis is carried out within Western Lignite Company (GLi). Occupational accidents have vital importance for the mines from legal, human and economic aspects. The goal of every mine should be to minimize occupational accidents. The top management of every mine should prove their commitments to the occupational health and safety policy to carry out this goal by means of preparing and implementing an accident preventing program.

[Truncated abstract] This thesis presents an operationally applicable and reliable model for quantification of the exposure of underground mining personnel to geotechnical hazards. The model is shown to have the flexibility to apply to very different operational environments, within the context of mechanised metalliferous mines. It provides an essential component for carrying out quantitative geotechnical risk analyses of underground mines. Increasingly prevalent within the Australian mining industry are moves towards a riskbased philosophy instead of prescriptive design procedures. A barrier to this has been the lag in availability of resources (personnel and technical) required for the intensive effort of applying probabilistic methods to geotechnical engineering at mines ... One of the missing components for quantitative risk analysis in mines has been an accurate model of personnel exposure to geotechnical hazards, from which meaningful estimates can be made of the probabilities of serious or fatal injury given a rockfall. Exposure profiling for geotechnical risk analysis at minesites has traditionally involved the simple classification of travelways and entry areas by their occupancy rate, not taking into account traffic and work characteristics which may significantly influence the risks. Therefore, it was the focus of this thesis to address that deficiency and progress the ability to perform semi-quantitative and quantitative risk analyses in mines.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 62 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-62).

Plese read the abstract in the section 00front of tis document / Thesis (DBA)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Graduate School of Management / unrestricted

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