An application of computational fluid dynamics in mine ventilation

The purpose of this paper is to present how Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations can be used to study the flow across the main airways of the mine ventilation system. In particular, the flow through the transition zones between upcast mine shafts and fan ductworks is investigated. These studies consider the potential design modifications of this transition zone to reduce the energy used for ventilation. Although CFD has many advantages, it does not completely eliminate the need for experiments, which are still needed to validate numerical solutions. For this reason, data collected during actual mine tests and CFD simulations are compared in this paper. This comparison allows a better understanding of the flow phenomena. Moreover, once the numerical solutions have been validated, CFD can be used with high confidence to predict the effect of changes in ductwork configurations on energy losses. CFD reduces the number and cost of tedious experiments, while enabling a broader scope of design comparisons.