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Caving

Issue: 
#56
Addressing the challenges and future of cave mining
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Jarek Jakubec , Geotechnical Engineer There are over 50 global cave mining projects in various stages of studies and development. Despite the fact that the cave mining method is more than 100 years old, it is only within the...
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Accounting for micro-defects in rock mass rating
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Andy Thomas , Geological Engineer In 2001, Laubscher’s Mining Rock Mass Rating (MRMR) classification system (Laubscher and Jakubec, 2001) introduced the rock block strength concept to account for scale effects and the influence of closed defects on intact rock...
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Microdefects: GSI for fragmentation assessment?
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Andrea Russo , Consultant Recently, SRK Chile was involved in a caving project in Chile and in charge of numerical modelling to analyse pillars and overall mine stability and to define ground support. The review of the basic geotechnical...
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Geotechnical data collection and approach to modelling for Cukaru Peki
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Neil Marshall , Corporate Consultant (Geotechnical Engineer) A geotechnical model is the fundamental basis for the design of an open-pit and underground mines. A fully understood and representative geotechnical model provides information on the engineering characteristics of the rock...
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Downstream effects of cave fragmentation
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Adrian Dance , Principal Metallurgist Since the 1990s, ‘mine-to-mill’ studies have evaluated the impact of blast fragmentation on downstream plant throughput. This was because crushing and grinding circuits (in particular, SAG mills) are sensitive to feed size and the...
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Geotechnical model development for caving design
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Ian de Bruyn , Geotechnical Engineer SRK performed a comprehensive redevelopment of the geotechnical model for an existing large panel caving operation with the aim of assisting cave planning and design in five future cave blocks. Initially, separate models...
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Geomechanical design for the world’s largest underground mine
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Esteban Hormazabal , Civil Mining Engineer 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...
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Mass mining diamonds
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Jarek Jakubec , Geotechnical Engineer Dan Lagacé , Consultant 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...
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Guidelines on Caving Mining Methods: The Underlying Concepts
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving 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...
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Open pit to underground transition
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Simon Hanrahan , Mining Engineer 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...
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Planning considerations for transition from open pit to underground
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Peter Terbrugge , Engineering Geologist 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...
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Rapid cave design and production scheduling
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Scott Loewen , Mining Engineer 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...
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Cave mining risks - not necessarily greater, but definitely different
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Neil Winkelmann , Senior Consultant 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...
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Mudrush dynamics in underground mining
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Jarek Jakubec , Geotechnical Engineer 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...
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The importance of post-drilling assessment
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Carl Kottmeier , Professional Engineer 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...
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Automation in a cave mining environment
Download A4 | Letter SRK News | Issue 56 : Caving Iouri Iakovlev , Engineering Consultant In general, automation is most effectively applied to repetitive tasks, such as production loading and trucking. The significant presence of these highly repetitive tasks in a cave mining environment make automation particularly attractive. The...
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