Deep Neural Network for Ore Production and Crusher Utilization Prediction of Truck Haulage System in Underground Mine

A new method using a deep neural network (DNN) model is proposed to predict the ore production and crusher utilization of a truck haulage system in an underground mine. An underground limestone mine was selected as the study area, and the DNN model input/output nodes were designed to reflect the truck haulage system characteristics. Big data collected on-site for 1 month were processed to create learning datasets. To select the optimal DNN learning model, the numbers of hidden layers and hidden layer nodes were set to various values for analyzing the training and test data. The optimal DNN model structure for ore production prediction was set to five hidden layers and 40 hidden layer nodes. The test data exhibited a coefficient of determination of 0.99 and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 2.80%. The optimal configuration for the crusher utilization prediction was set to four hidden layers and 40 hidden layer nodes, and the test data exhibited a coefficient of determination of 0.99 and MAPE of 2.49%. The trained DNN model was used to predict the ore production and crusher utilization, which were similar to the actual observed values.