Anglo American are developing the $1.95 billion dollar Grosvenor longwall project north of Moranbah approximately 190 km south west of Mackay, Queensland. The coal mine which will have an operational life in excess of 30 years and is the first underground coal mine in Queensland to use a tunnel boring machine to develop the access drifts.
icubed consulting was engaged by Wagners Precast and Anglo American to complete the detailed design and construction inspections for the drift floor units. A further innovation of this project was to implement precast double leg floor system for the man and materials drift and conveyor drift which are 7.0 meters in diameter. This innovative system was cast in a 24 hour operation at the Wagners Precast facility in Wacol, Brisbane. The TT units have been designed to the highest engineering standards and to cater for the range of underground mining equipment required to develop the mine and to install the longwall operations.
Using this innovative precast system the floor units were able to be installed three months ahead of schedule and have now been operational for over nine months. Construction of the longwall infrastructure is progressing and icubed consulting are providing ongoing support to Anglo American for the assessment of alternate equipment being installed and conveyed in and out of the drift as part of the establishment of the longwall operations. Our support of the project is anticipated to continue until longwall mining commences in late 2016.
icubed consulting’s design incorporated the use of prefabricated steel reinforcing required to provide strength to the floor units for the range of equipment which is required to access the mine. This includes skid mounted equipment, wheeled traffic up to 40 tonne load haul dumpers and a 70 tonne tractor mine dozer. Given the very large loads of which the equipment would impose on the floor a very vigorous analysis was completed using high level finite element analysis and reinforced concrete design techniques developed internally within the icubed business.
