Experiments and the computer simulation of the behavior of ventilation air around shafts during a mine fire

Inoue, Masahiro*; Nakaba, Nozomi*; Yamanishi, Takeshi; Yamakami, Masanori*; Hatakeyama, Nobuya; Yamazaki, Masanao; Sakai, Tetsuo*; Okuzono, Akihiko*

The fire gas generated by a mine fire changes ventilation system by the buoyancy and the throttling effect, the adverse airflow along the roadway ceiling. As the result, the fire gas can reach upwind areas where was thought that the fire gas will never reach. These phenomena are remarkable around shafts which have large altitude differences. In order to prevent the accidents, it is important to make an accurate prediction of the behavior of ventilation air during a mine fire and the effective control of the ventilation air. However, this behavior has not been studied well so far. For this reason, the authors studied this behavior using a scaled model experiments and ascertained the major change of ventilation air. Then the effect of ventilation air control was studied. Following the results, a computer program to simulate the behavior of the fire gas by CFD method. It was confirmed that the program shows sufficient accuracy within the practical calculation time.