ABSTRACT
Roadheaders were first developed for mechanical excavation of coal in the late 1940s in Europe (Kogelmann and Schenck 1982). Roadheaders are partial-face machines excavating only a portion of the face at once and a certain number of cutters are in contact with the face. The basic advantages of roadheaders over the other underground excavation machines are their mobility, flexibility, and selective mining ability (Ozdemir 1997). These advantages, in addition to general advantages of mechanical excavation, provide them for being used widely and having a very important and unique position in underground mining and tunneling operations, although they are also used in surface operations.
