Long-term scheduling in underground coal mining using mixed binary programming

Recognizing the complexity of coal mining management, e.g., the scarcity of financial resources and the high level of uncertainty, a mixed binary programming model has been developed as an aid for generating production schedules which maximize the associated net present value. Defining the mine layout as a precedence network, with the nodes representing mining blocks, a solution procedure is developed, based on Benders' partitioning scheme. That is, the procedure iterates between two problems, namely, the master (primal) problem, solved by a combination of heuristic and exact methods, and the subproblem (dual problem), solved partly by inspection and partly as a minimal cost network flow problem. The heuristic methods are based on improvements of existing algorithms for scheduling precedence-related jobs on m processors. Computational experiences are presented and the procedure is demonstrated on a mining case.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

Department dc:contributor.department

Industrial Engineering and Operations Research

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Year dc:date.issued

1989

Author dc:creator

• West-Hansen, Jan

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Sarin, Subhash C.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Adel, Gregory T.
• Freeman, H. J.
• Sherali, Hanif
• Suboleski, Stanley C.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/54807

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/54807