ABSTRACT
Planning processes for establishing ventilation network details are widely used in many different generic forms. The longwall ventilation planning and design process is a subset of these established procedures. Usually these processes are developed as a result of the personal experience of the mining engineer involved with ventilation planning of a number of projects over a period of time. The methodology utilized in this process strives to arrive at a ventilation design that satisfies all criteria set including those of minimum ventilation requirements and minimizing cost. The solution to a given longwall ventilation scenario may then meet the criteria set but may be suboptimal dependant on the level of experience and expertise of the engineer involved in the design process. The knowledge based development of design methodologies exists in various forms, an example of which can be seen in Basu & Wala (1993).
