Ventilation is a critical task in underground mining operation. Lack of a good ventilation system causes accumulation of harmful gases, explosions, and even fatalities. A proper ventilation system provides adequate fresh air to miners for a safe and comfortable working environment. Fans, which provide air flow to different faces of a mine, have great impact in ventilation systems. Thus, selection of appropriate fans for a mine is the acute task. Unsuitable selection of a fan decreases safety and production rate, which increases capital and operational costs. Moreover, pitch angle of fans&rsquo / blades plays an important role in fan&rsquo / s efficiency. Therefore, selection of a fan and its pitch angle, which yields the maximum efficiency, is an emerging issue for an efficient mine ventilation.
The main objective of this research study is to provide a decision making methodology for the selection of a main fan and its appropriate pitch angle for efficient mine ventilation. Nowadays, analytical hierarchy process as multi criteria decision making is used, and it yields outputs based on pairwise comparison. On the other hand, Fuzzy Logic as a soft computing method was combined with analytical hierarchy process and combined model did not yield appropriate results / because Fuzzy AHP increased uncertainty ratio in this study. However, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process might be inapplicable when it faces with vague and complex data set. Soft computing methods can be utilized for complicated situations. One of the soft computing methods is a Neuro-Fuzzy algorithm which is used in classification and DM issues.
This study has two phases: i) selection of an appropriate fan using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) and ii) selection of an appropriate pitch angle using Neuro-Fuzzy algorithm and Fuzzy AHP method.
This study showed that AHP can be effectively utilized for main fan selection. It performs better than Fuzzy AHP because FAHP contains more expertise and makes problems more complex for evaluating. When FAHP and Neuro-Fuzzy is compared for pitch angle selection, both methodologies yielded the same results. Therefore, utilization of Neuro-Fuzzy in situation with complicated and vague data will be applicable.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614320/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 May 2012 |
| Creators | Taghizadeh Vahed, Amir |
| Contributors | Demirel, Nuray |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | Access forbidden for 1 year |
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