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Published in March 2008 Australian Longwall Magazine
Longwall Visual Analysis offers a software package that gives a graphical analysis of longwall pressures in real-time and historical viewing options. The status of the longwall can be viewed in 2D and 3D, along with analysis of cycles, trending and face scans, and overlaying longwall data onto mine maps.
The company also offers LVA Telltales – a program that imports telltale data from a spreadsheet into a format that allows users to pull up any mine, roadway and date and see a list of telltale data for any point.
“The major benefit of our software is in the speed which engineers can see what impact their decisions are having on production. Our clients report that the reporting functions have helped them to more effectively allocate resources to production; produced panel reports to analyse a complete panel; and use the alarm feature to monitor major events,” LVA’s Alister Waller said.
While LVA's software is already being run at Crinum, Oaky North, Appin and being trialed at West Cliff - LVA thought a leasing arrangement would make the software more easily accessible to mines.
The operational lease works on a once-off installation fee and then a weekly fee with no time contract. And even if a mine discontinues the lease it will retain the ability to use the software on its historical data.
Waller said updates to the software are supplied under the lease and telephone support is available 24/7, every day of the year. As part of the installation cost training is provided.
LVA said it had recently added several new features to the software including email alerts, console screen for displaying in the control room or common areas, data export to csv file, view 3D and trending data versus time or chainage, trending screen printouts and fault reports.
“We have made some major changes to the program itself and have just released Version 2 which improves the data collection and database creation process. Version 2 also improves on network performance by keeping a local copy of the current data,” Waller said.
