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Many ore deposits extend vertically, a fact which is not always known at the start of mining. If initial mining is by opencast methods and ore reserves are proven to greater depths, the pits are often planned to go deeper than originally envisaged. In such cases, surface plants and critical underground facilities — conveyor tunnels,
... Continue reading.SRK carried out a scoping study on an existing open pit operation (12 Mtpa) that is soon to be reaching a depth where the mine will need to transition to a large-scale underground mining method. The goal was to provide production continuity at a rate that will still be suitable to maximise use of the
... Continue reading.In 2000, International Caving Study (ICS) published a practical manual on block caving by Dr. Dennis Laubscher. This first comprehensive block caving publication was co-authored by several industry experts, including Dr. Alan Guest and Jarek Jakubec of SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. Unfortunately, the distribution of this publication was not widely available. Meanwhile, the demand for
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Mass mining including block caving, incline caving, front caving, sub-level caving and sub-level retreat are the principal mining methods for primary diamond deposits worldwide. Diamonds have only been mined on an industrial scale within the past 150 years, mainly as open pit mines. Underground mining of those deposits was first implemented within the second half
... Continue reading.The Chuquicamata underground mine in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile is one of the largest planned mining projects in the world to use block caving with macro-blocks option to mine copper ore. CODELCO is currently finishing the detailed engineering stage and constructing the main infrastructure for the project. The underground mine is expected to
... Continue reading.It is important in an industry such as cave mining to keep up-to-date knowledge, experience and best practice at the forefront to maintain the best possible level of safety for all involved. Unfortunately, much knowledge is proprietary to commercial research project sponsors. The Australian Centre for Geomechanics Caving 2018 Symposium, with Collaborating Organisation SRK Consulting
... Continue reading.Particularly at the earlier stages of a rock engineering project, the lack of appropriate data manifests itself in the form of increased uncertainty and difficulties in characterizing rock mass variability in an objective manner. When mine-scale problems are considered, it is not possible to sample all of the rock mass, therefore a relative large number
... Continue reading.This presentation will cover the evolution of block size distribution (BSD) within a draw column during block cave mining. BSD plays an important role in controlling gravitational flow, secondary fragmentation, and fines migration in broken ore—all of which are fundamental in preparing a reliable feasibility assessment for a potential caving operation. However, there is a
... Continue reading.GEOVIA’s PCBC software has been used to model fines migration in various ways for over twenty years. There are three different flow mechanisms in PCBC which allow some form of fines migration to be simulated. The first is Pre-Vertical Mixing in which fines material is assumed to move downwards faster than coarser components. The second
... Continue reading.The welcoming note and introduction will briefly describe the concept and philosophy of the Cave Mining Forum which is primarily to connect professionals from the mining industry. Jarek will also provide a brief overview of the current cave mining world, past experiences and challenges. This presentation summarizes a talk given during the second workshop of
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