Analysis of mine ventilation networks using nonlinear programming techniques

Summary Solving ventilation networks of natural air splitting is a classical problem in mine ventilation. A common approach to this problem is to formulate it based on Kirchhoff's voltage and current laws and obtain the solution by an iterative technique known as the Hardy Cross method. In this paper, it is shown that the problem can be formulated and analysed as an unconstrained optimization (minimization) problem. The computational experience with the method of conjugate gradients is also discussed.