Applications of expert systems in equipment selection for surface mine design

ABSTRACT The MINDER system (MINe Design using Expert Reasoning), has been developed to a prototype level in the Department of Mining Engineering, University of Nottingham. The Xi-Plus shell system has been used to create a multi-level expert system capable of accessing and controlling both commercially available mine planning software and 'in-house' programs. The expert system is used primarily for surface mining method selection and excavation and haulage equipment selection. Methods of storing knowledge, interrogating and controlling external programs, and reaching conclusions using multiple knowledgebases have been discussed in previous papers by the authors, and will be dealt with only briefly in this paper. This paper concentrates on the methods used to rank equipment, including relational operations (both with the knowledgebase and in external databases) and fuzzy logic techniques. The paper will include an example of the ranking of hydraulic excavators under UK surface coal mining conditions.