As covered in our previous blog post, the Caving 2018 Conference took place in October in Vancouver and was ‘sold out; with over 250 attendees participating in the event.
GEOVIA was well represented at the event, both via direct papers (where Caving Business Unit employees were authors of papers) and indirectly where our clients have made positive references to the papers.
This blog provides a short summary of the GEOVIA “direct” papers at the Conference:
1. Palabora Lift 1 block cave: Understanding the grade behavior
T Diering, Dassault Systèmes, Canada; SN Ngidi, JJ Bezuidenhout, HD Paetzold, Palabora Mining Company, South Africa
This paper outlined how the grade modeling at Palabora has evolved over the years and the huge impact that the open pit failure in 2004 (below) had on the mine plans. Core software for the modeling was PCBC. It outlines 18 years of calibration work done to keep the model in line with what has actually been produced from the mine.
2. Integrated simulation and optimisation tools for production scheduling using finite element analysis caving geomechanics simulation coupled with 3D cellular automata
S Arndt, Monash University, Australia; T Bui, T Diering, Dassault Systèmes, Canada; I Austen, Newcrest Mining Limited, Australia; R Hocking, OZ Minerals, Australia
This paper outlines some significant development done recently between GEOVIA and Simulia brands for the client, Newcrest Mining Limited in Australia. The overall goal of the project is very ambitious and aims to assist with an integrated approach to modeling the cave back growth of a cave and how it relates to and interacts with the direct mining sequence. Gaining an increased understanding of the key drivers for cave propagation will play an every increasing role in cave mine planning.
Stephan Arndt (Monash University), Tony Diering and Rodney Hocking (Oz Minerals)
3. Footprint finder tool for sublevel caving
T Diering, Dassault Systèmes, Canada; F Breed, De Beers Group of Companies, South Africa
This introduced a new tool called FFSLC or Footprint Finder for SLC. Freddie Breed from De Beers Venetia Mine presented the paper and also showed how the tool had added significant value to the Venetia Underground Project. FFSLC is the equivalent for SLC mining as Whittle is for open pit or Stope Optimizer is for other underground mining methods. The slide below shows how the Footprint Finder tool was able to add value compared to a previous optimization exercise. The FF tool took two days compared to the previous exercise of several weeks.
4. Non-vertical cave and dilution modelling at New Gold’s New Afton Mine
J Parsons, D Hamilton, New Gold, Canada; C Ludwicki, Dassault Systèmes, Canada
Josh Parsons from New Afton and Christina Ludwicki from Dassault Systèmes showed how the PCBC tool was able to be calibrated to the surface subsidence profile at the New Afton mine. Once calibrated, the PCBC tool was able to provide improved forecasting for ongoing mine planning purposes. The challenge for this process was that the main subsidence was not directly above where the caving was taking place suggesting some significant non-vertical movement.
GOOD REFERENCE PAPERS
In addition to the above 4 papers, there were several other references to the use of our software, but one of these was significant in endorsing the effectiveness of the Caving toolset.
Undercut Sequencing at the Grasberg Block Cave mine
By Drew Beard et al from Freeport Phoenix office.
This was a great study for the new Undercut module in PCBC. Drew showed how they were able to look at several different scenarios of undercut sequence integrating with the draw point production schedules. This integrated approach is a first and essential for a very large mine such as GBC (Grasberg Block Cave). To give an idea of the scale of the project, development of the mine started in 2004 and first production is scheduled for early 2019, some 15 years later! An undercut sequence example from this paper is shown below (for 13 years of undercut)
Downloadable Papers
The papers from the Fourth International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving are freely downloadable on the ACG’s Online Repository.
Click here to view the open access proceedings.
Michael Diering (Nevsun Resources) and Tony Diering
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