Although forced auxiliary ventilation is widely employed at heading faces, it is not easy to lay out the optimum ventilation system for a given heading face mainly because of the complexity of airflow. Therefore, it is essential to obtain detailed knowledge about the influence of the conditions of the ventilation system upon airflow patterns at the face. From this point of view the effects of the position of the outlet of the air duct, the airflow rate from the duct and others are investigated by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).
As a result, much important information is obtained concerning the influence of conditions of the ventilation system upon airflow patterns in the face. The results also show that the computation method, which the authors proposed in a previous report, is an effective tool for simulating the airflow under varied conditions of the ventilation system.