In sublevel caving operations, it is imperative that the production blastholes be drilled accurately so that there is no risk of unblasted ore remaining between adjacent drawpoints. Post-drilling assessment is the process of mitigating this risk by verifying that blastholes have been drilled accurately with the correct length and orientation, following the blast design. Although
... Continue reading.Mudrush, mudflow, or mudpush are the most common terms describing uncontrolled ingress of assorted mixture of water and solids. Mudrush is the underground equivalent of surface debris flow. It can have different origins but produce the same results: injury, loss of life, damage to property, excess dilution, and production delays, or — in extreme cases
... Continue reading.Cave mining, and in particular block-cave mining, stands at one end of the spectrum of mining method-related risks. It is not so much that the risks are greater, but rather that the ability of management to respond to variations in expected conditions is much less than with other mining methods. Compounding this in the case
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For early stage caving projects, there is usually a high degree of uncertainty in the input parameters that impact the mine design and strategy. When dealing with such uncertainty, it is better to quickly generate multiple designs and schedules that cover the likely range of key parameters rather than evaluating only a few or even
... 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 industry perception is that sublevel caving is a “dirty mining method” (i.e. high dilution and low recovery). However, there were several successful sublevel cave mines executed in the past. The success of a sublevel cave mine is not by chance – they are engineered to perform. This talk will review some of the recent
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