Guest Editorial-Special issue on advances in mine safety science ＆ engineering

Mine safety encompasses many aspects of a mining operation,ranging from personnel and equipment safety to the safety of the environment.Mine disasters such as fires,floods,explosions,outbursts,rockbursts,ground caving,pit slope slides,and tailings dam failures,pose serious threats to the lives of mine operators,

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION & THE DEVELOPMENT OF FIRE- SAFETY SCIENCE IN CHINA

Ⅰ. INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION FACILITATES CHINESE FIRE-SAFETY SCIENCE TO TAKE SHAPE,DEVELOP AND REACH THE WORLD STANDARD Fire-safety science mainly studies the mechanism and rules of the occurrence, development and prevention of fire disasters.It is a new research area and academic subject which is developing at the intersection point of technological sciences,basic natural sciences and

Collaboration networks evolution of Safety Science from 1976 to 2019

There is a recent interest to understand the nature of the safety science discipline and to obtain insights in its development patterns and research trends.This article analyzes the evolution of the prevalence and scale of collaborative publishing and the macro-level collaboration scale of the Safety Science research community.Additionally,an analysis of the evolution of influential research topics of the core researchers’collaboration networks provides insights in the domain’s high-level development trends.Both the prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration are found to have increased dramatically since the inception of Journal of Occupational Accidents,Safety Science’s predecessor.Research networks have grown significantly,and collaboration between core researchers has steadily increased.Even though this indicates that a core safety science research community has developed,it is also found that the journal continues to serve as a platform for many small and unconnected author clusters.In terms of influential research topics,there is a notable shift from technical aspects of work safety towards psychological and organizational mechanisms of safety.More recently,influential work of core research networks has additionally focused on safety and risk models and methods,the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the domain,and influential research clusters have formed around safety in specific industries.The focus topics of core researcher’s collaboration clusters furthermore highlight the variety of conceptual,theoretical,and methodological approaches co-existing within Safety Science.Various implications of the findings are discussed,where both possible benefits and drawbacks of increased collaboration are highlighted and future research avenues outlined.

Study on Design and Safety Evaluation Methods of Mechanical-Thermal Weak-Link

In an abnormal high-temperature fire environment,a structure with mechanical-thermal weak-link can be used to predict the permanent failure before the failure of some strong-links,such as explosive initiator,thus to protect the latter. An effective design can be defined as that the weak-link fails before the failure of the strong-link,and the system is safe; while an unsuccessful design means that the weak-link fails after the failure of the strong-link,and the system loses in safety. The probability of safety failure exists due to the uncertain failure temperatures of the weak-link and strong-link. In order to obtain the probability of safety failure,a statistical method was used to deal with the uncertainty of the failure temperatures. The integral method and stochastic simulation method were used in calculations. Finally,a sample was given to verify the consistence of the results given by two methods.

Research on Distribution Regularities of Dust Concentration and Granularity in Large Mining Height Working Face

The key for dust control of coal mine is to clarify the dust concentration distribution and sedimentation in different areas. Both similarity experiment and numerical simulation method have certain restrictions and are quite different from the actual situation on site. In order to study the dust sedimentation regularity of coal mine in large mining height, “filter membrane method” is adopted in this paper, i.e., to dry and weigh the filter membrane before and after sampling, collect the dust of respirable zone on mining face and calculate the dust concentration based on a main airway of 100 m. The result shows that: A large amount of dust will be produced during coal mining, wherein the maximum dust concentration from 6 m upstream to 100 m downstream of coal cutter is 121 mg/m3, while the minimum dust concentration is 61 mg/m3;The dust concentration in return airway is reduced with the distance increases, while the dust concentration at the entrance is 91 mg/m3;A large amount of dust may fall from roof during section advancing and improves the dust concentration of hydraulic support in walking area obviously;The dust granularity of mining face and return airway is 0 - 100 μm, but the amount of respirable dust is higher than 80%, the larger the dust particle size, the higher the dust concentration. Besides, dust in small particle size can be suspended in air flow for longer, but that in large particle size may subside under the action of gravity;To reduce dust exposure, the mining position shall be located in the windward direction of advancing or coal cutter. This research can provide guidance for taking dust prevention measures of working face in large mining height.