Reconstruction and operational direction schedules of mine lanes with mixed-mine truck flow for efficiency improvement

Abstract

Temporal and spatial imbalances in truck flow often occur in mining operations due to fluctuating production demands and varying operational conditions. In current mining road systems, lane directions are typically unrestricted, allowing trucks to travel in both directions. However, each lane can only be occupied by one truck at a time, leading to congestion on certain roads while others remain underutilized. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel approach that imposes directional restrictions on mine lanes and introduces operational direction schedules to optimize mixed-mine truck flow. A bi-level programming model is formulated to solve this problem, incorporating both the reconstruction of mine lanes and the scheduling of their operational directions. In the upper-level model, the number of controlled mine lanes and scheduling plans are determined to minimize the total operational cost. The lower-level model captures the behavior of mixed-mine truck flow, where both connected autonomous mine trucks (CAMTs) and connected human-driven mine trucks (CHMTs) follow a user equilibrium principle. Factors such as value of time (VOT) and fuel consumption are included in the generalized cost function. A numerical example based on a typical mining network is conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution. The results indicate that the introduction of operational direction schedules can significantly improve the overall efficiency of the mining transportation system.