Chaudron, Joseph

SUBJECT AREA: Mining and extraction technology

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b. 29 November 1822 Gosselies, Belgium

d. 16 January 1905 Auderghem, Belgium

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Belgian mining engineer, pioneer in boring shafts.

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In 1842, as a graduate of the Ecole des Mines in Liège, he became a member of the Belgian Corps Royal des Mines, which he left ten years later as Chief Engineer. By that time he had become decisively influential in the Société Anglo-Belge des Mines du Rhin, founded in 1848. After it became the Gelsenkirchen-based Bergwerkgesellschaft Dahlbusch in 1873, he became President of its Board of Directors and remained in this position until his death. Thanks to his outstanding technical and financial abilities, the company developed into one of the largest in the Ruhr coal district.

When K.G. Kind practised his shaft-boring for the company in the early 1850s but did not overcome the difficulty of making the bottom of the bore-hole watertight, Chaudron joined forces with him to solve the problem and constructed a rotary heading which was made watertight with a box stuffed with moss; rings of iron tubing were placed on this as the sinking progressed, effectively blocking off the aquiferous strata as a result of the hydrostatic pressure which helped support the weight of the tubing until it was secured permanently. The Kind-Chaudron system of boring shafts in the full section marked an important advance upon existing methods, and was completely applied for the first time at a coalmine near Mons, Belgium, in 1854–6. In Brussels Chaudron and Kind founded the Société de Fonçage par le Procédé Kind et Chaudron in 1854, and Chaudron was granted a patent the next year. Foreign patents followed and the Kind-Chaudron system was the one most frequently applied in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Altogether, under Chaudron's control, there were more than eighty shafts sunk in wet strata in Germany, Belgium, France and England.

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Bibliography

1853–4, "Notice sur le procédé inventé par l'ingénieur Kind, pour l"établissement des puits de mines', Annales des travaux publics de Belgique 12:327–38.

1862, "Über die nach dem Kindschen Erdbohrverfahren in Belgien ausgefùhrten Schachtbohrarbeiten", Berg-und Hüttenmännische Zeitschrift 21:402−7, 419−21, 444−7.

1867, "Notice sur les travaux exécutés en France, en Belgique et en Westphalie de 1862– 1867", Annales des travaux publics de Belgique 25: 136–45.

1872, "Remplacement d'un cuvelage en bois par un cuvelage en fonte", Annales des

travaux publics de Belgique 30:77–91.

Further Reading

D.Hoffmann, 1962, Acht Jahrzehnte Gefrierverfahren nachPötsch, Essen, pp. 12–18 (evaluates the Kind-Chaudron system as a new era).

W.Kesten, 1952, Geschichte der Bergwerksgesellschaft Dahlbusch, Essen (gives a delineation of the mining company's flourishing as well as the technical measures under his influence).

T.Tecklenburg, 1914, Handbuch der Tiefbohrkunde, 2nd edn, Vol VI, Berlin, pp. 39–58 (provides a detailed description of Chaudron's tubing).

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