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Key words: Lighting equipment, Underground mines, Illuminance levels, Mining standards, Quality of visual environment.
Abstract: Paper deals with lighting requirements for underground mines and summarizes the most influential factors in lighting design process in order to create adequate lighting system. It also reviews current world-wide illumination standards and guidelines, having in mind that none of the published values gives complete solution to visual needs of the workers in underground mines, it varies greatly from country to country. After introduction with theoretical background, case study is presented and discussed in this paper.
1. INTRODUCTION
Mining has long moved on from the simple Davy safety lamp. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, miners commonly suffered from the eye disease nystagmus, for which there was no known cure. Nystagmus produced uncontrollable oscillation of the eyeballs, headaches, dizziness and loss of night vision. It was caused by working under very low light levels over long periods of time. Coal miners were particularly susceptible, since very little of the light that strikes the coal is reflected. With the introduction of the electric cap lamp in mines, miner's nystagmus has disappeared, eliminating the most important health hazard associated with underground lighting. With recent technological advances in new light sources, the interest in lighting and health has been revived. It is now possible to have lighting levels in mines that would have been extremely difficult to achieve before.
Adequate illumination and safe visual working environment are a challenges faced by almost all mining industries. Lighting in mines presents special problems because of the dark surroundings and low reflectance. It must be emphasized that published lighting values are not the complete answer to the problem they are meant to help solve. Standards discussed in this paper are only intended to specify minimum requirements for meeting the priority visual needs of the mine-face situation. To realize the optimum benefit from mine lighting, it may be desirable to exceed these minimum requirements in some instances and to consider additional factors.
In open cast mines where work is being carried out at night shifts, effective illumination is required to achieve production and safe operation of various machinery at different work areas. Open-cast mines cover a large area and continually change their shape as...