NEW CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR LONGWALL ARMORED FACE CONVEYORS

This paper investigates a new control approach for longwall armored fa ce conveyors (AFC's) using variable-speed drives (VSD's), Traditionall y, AFC's have used fixed-speed or two-speed motors, with various mecha nical solutions employed to try to solve the problems that this causes , The VSD approach to the control problem promises to solve all the si gnificant problems associated with the control of AFC's, This paper wi ll present the control algorithms developed for a VSD-based AFC drive system and demonstrate potential performance via computer simulation, A full discussion of the problems involved with the control of AFC's c an be found in the companion paper [1].