Sunkpal Maurice, Roghanchi Pedram, Kocsis Karoly C
Mining Engineering Department, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, USA.
Saf Health Work. 2018 Jun;9(2):149-158. doi: 10.1016/j.shaw.2017.06.011. Epub 2017 Jul 13.
Work comfort studies have been extensively conducted, especially in the underground and meteorological fields resulting in an avalanche of recommendations for their evaluation. Nevertheless, no known or universally accepted model for comprehensively assessing the thermal work condition of the underground mine environment is currently available. Current literature presents several methods and techniques, but none of these can expansively assess the underground mine environment since most methods consider only one or a few defined factors and neglect others. Some are specifically formulated for the built and meteorological climates, thus making them unsuitable to accurately assess the climatic conditions in underground development and production workings.
This paper presents a series of sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of environmental parameters and metabolic rate on the thermal comfort for underground mining applications. An approach was developed in the form of a "comfort model" which applied comfort parameters to extensively assess the climatic conditions in the deep, hot, and humid underground mines.
Simulation analysis predicted comfort limits in the form of required sweat rate and maximum skin wettedness. Tolerable worker exposure times to minimize thermal strain due to dehydration are predicted.
The analysis determined the optimal air velocity for thermal comfort to be 1.5 m/s. The results also identified humidity to contribute more to deviations from thermal comfort than other comfort parameters. It is expected that this new approach will significantly help in managing heat stress issues in underground mines and thus improve productivity, safety, and health.
工作舒适度研究已广泛开展，尤其是在地下和气象领域，由此产生了大量关于其评估的建议。然而，目前尚无全面评估地下矿井环境热工作条件的已知或普遍接受的模型。当前文献介绍了几种方法和技术，但由于大多数方法仅考虑一个或几个特定因素而忽略其他因素，因此这些方法均无法全面评估地下矿井环境。有些方法是专门针对建筑和气象气候制定的，因此不适用于准确评估地下开拓和生产作业中的气候条件。
本文进行了一系列敏感性分析，以评估环境参数和代谢率对地下采矿应用中热舒适度的影响。开发了一种以“舒适度模型”形式呈现的方法，该方法应用舒适度参数全面评估深部、高温和潮湿地下矿井的气候条件。
模拟分析预测了以所需出汗率和最大皮肤湿润度形式表示的舒适度极限。预测了为将脱水引起的热应激降至最低所需的工人可耐受暴露时间。
分析确定热舒适度的最佳风速为1.5米/秒。结果还表明，湿度对热舒适度偏差的影响比其他舒适度参数更大。预计这种新方法将显著有助于管理地下矿井的热应激问题，从而提高生产率、安全性和健康水平。
