One of the most effective parameters in economics of open-pit mines is the pit slope angle, so that the slope angle more than the optimum value increases the probability of a large failure in the pit wall and the slope angle less than the optimum value leads to increasing stripping ratio and reducing net present value of mine. Therefore, in this paper, considering the limit equilibrium methods ...

In large open pit mines prediction of Peak Particle Velocity (PPV) provides useful information for safe blasting. At Sungun Copper Mine (SCM), some unstable rock slopes facing to valuable industrial facilities are both expose to high intensity daily blasting vibrations, threatening their safty. So, controlling PPV by developing accurate predictors is essential. Hence, this study proposes improv...

Since 1971, Island Copper Mine has been operating an open-pit mine, mainly for copper on the north shore of Rupert Inlet. Rupert Inlet is the most easterly inlet of Quatsino Sound on northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia (Fig. i). The ore body was estimated to contain 250 million tons of reserves. Mining is proposed to be continued until 1996, at which time the reserves will have been dep...

During its 25 years of production from 1972 to 1998, the Gibraltar Cu-Mo mine in east-central British Columbia (Figure 1) milled a total of 324 million tons of ore containing an average 0.351% Cu from four open pits. Fieldwork during 2000 involved just over two weeks of detailed pit mapping at the mine. Results of this work and several earlier intervals of pit mapping conducted in 1998 and 1999...

The computer-based 3D modeling of ore bodies is one of the most important steps in the resource estimation, grade determination, and production scheduling of open-pit mines. In the modeling phase, the volume of the orebody model is required to be filled by the blocks and sub-blocks. The determination of Block Size (BS) is important due to the dependence of the geostatistical issues and calculat...

A vehicle proximity warning collision avoidance system is being developed using GPS and wireless local area networks to improve safety of off-highway trucks in open pit mines. After two an a half years of research, software development, and laboratory testing, field tests were carried out at operating limestone quarries and open pit mining operations to evaluate GPS accuracy and overall system ...

Production scheduling (planning) of an open-pit mine is the procedure during which the rock blocks are assigned to different production periods in a way that the highest net present value of the project achieved subject to operational constraints. The paper introduces a new and computationally less expensive meta-heuristic technique known as imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) for long-term...

Planning and design procedure of an open pit mining project just can be started after ultimate pit determination. In the carried out study in this paper it was shown that the most important factor in ultimate pit determination and in consequence in the whole planning and design procedure of an open pit mine is the metal price. Metal price fluctuations in recent years were exaggerated and impose...