ACCOUNTING FOR GROUND-RELATED PROBLEMS IN MINE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS PLANNING

Ground-related problems represent a significant source of operating risk and justify particular attention in proactive mine planning and design. This paper presents a new approach to quantify the impact of such problems in underground hardrock mining and considers the links between mine planning and ground-related problems. A classification of the various types of potential problems is presented, based on a review of case studies and the surveillance of ground failures in several mines in Ontario, Canada. Despite serious efforts to advance the effectiveness of design in such underground mines, ground-related problems still cannot be totally avoided. A time-dependent internal risk model was established to quantify the impact of ground-related problems in mine production systems. Subjective probabilities provide the input for a reliability analysis, which derives the required input parameters for production simulation. Reliability analyses that are currently used to calculate the reliability of mine equipment were applied for the case of mine subsystems with ground-related problems. A cost impact model is presented that is dependent on the parameters determined in a reliability analysis.