Abstract
To be competitive on the international market, the Canadian mining industry must reduce its costs, increase its productivity and maintain a high standard of safety. There is a great need today for improved methods that would allow the detection of geological structures in advance of mining to reduce dilution and the monitoring of underground structures to increase safety. This will facilitate planning for optimum exploitation of the mine and to Increase production at lower costs. This paper discusses two examples of more efficient mine planning using new technologies such as Ground Probing Radar (GPR). In Kidd Creek mine, GPR technology was used at the 2500 and 2600 levels to (1) monitor the stability of the sill pillar; (2) locate the presence of disseminated sulphide pockets in the sill pillar for extracting the mineral content; (3) monitor the stope backs and wall structures to evaluate the effect of on-time filling sequences; and (4) assess rockfill quality in terms of the presence of voids and fractures within the rockfilled areas. In the New Brunswick coal mine in Minto, GPR was used along with core log data to map and construct a 3D block of a section of the bench showing the relative position of different layers overlying the coal seam.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages | 107-110 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Volume | 89 |
No | 1001 |
Specialist publication | CIM Bulletin |
State | Published - 1996 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Ground Probing Radar (GPR)
- Mine planning
- Rock mechanics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology
- Metals and Alloys