Optimisation tools which determine the best layout for access and haulage in an underground mine address an important and difficult mine design problem. The complexity of the problem can be compared to the task of optimising the final pit design in an open pit, together with the pit haul roads required. The strategic design of an underground mine layout must address the location of haulage shaf...

Transportation costs are a significant part of capital and operating costs of large open pit mines. Cost efficiency and high reliability of in pit crushing and conveying systems compared to conventional truck-shovel system makes it more appealing to be utilized in modern mining activities. In this paper the suitable location of an in pit crusher is investigated as a single hub location problem....

The major infrastructure component required to develop an underground mine is a decline, which is a system of tunnels used for access and haulage. In this paper we study the problem of designing a decline of minimum cost where cost is a combination of development and haulage costs over the life of the mine. A key design consideration is that the decline must be navigable to trucks and mining eq...

Horizontal cooperation between road haulage contractors is well established in practice. However, over time many cooperations were subject to transformational processes that led their organizations to merge. Here, a concept of collaborative planning, operational transport collaboration, is discussed. This concept achieves higher degrees of organizational autonomy for the participants of coopera...

Intensive seismicity was often observed in the front of tabular stopes in South African gold mines. The seismicity was usually caused by high stress concentration due to excavation, and some of the seismic events were fault rupture events. This study focuses on numerical modelling of seismic wave propagation resulted from a moment magnitude Mw = 1.4 seismic even...

This paper discusses the background to real-time GPS asset tracking in the context of 1) monitoring moving vehicles, 2) the content of the GPS data that is provided as part of the 2 systems that were tested, 3) the theory behind the installation of such tracking systems in terms of GPS, GPRS and internet communications and finally, 4) the assessment of the economic benefits of both systems is a...

The current advancement of robotics, especially in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), leads to a prominent combination between the mining industry and connected-embedded technologies. This progress has arisen form state-of-the-art automated giant vehicles with Autonomous Haulage (AHS) that can transport ore without human intervention. Like CPS, AHS enable autonomous and/or remote control physical sy...

Contemporary off-grid mining operations rely on diesel fuel for the provision of their total energy including electricity, heat, and haulage. Given high cost its imposed greenhouse gas emissions, companies are looking more affordable cleaner sources operations. Although renewable systems, such as solar photovoltaic wind provide efficient solutions to address this challenge, full decarbonization...