System simulation is an increasingly popular technique for analyzing and improving existing as well as newly designed underground mining operations. An engineering firm that specializes in simulation helped a major metals producer build a long-range planning model of an existing underground mine. Subsequently the team adapted this model to assess technology alternatives in the design of a new m...

Shaft sinking is one of the main parts in underground mine planning. Shaft has various applications in underground mines e.g. minerals exiting flow, gases entrance or exit way, stope developments for exploitation etc. Considering that this section requires an abundance of expenses, management always following the election is the way that both terms have the technical considerations, economic co...

It is well recognized that software tools for strategic underground mine planning are lacking, and that the demand for these tools will increase as deeper deposits amenable to underground mining continue to grow in value. While a number of optimization techniques have been developed for stope layout design and progress continues to be made in the area of production scheduling, both of these min...

OBJECTIVE In this simulator-based study, we aimed to quantify performance differences between joystick steering systems using first-order and second-order control, which are used in underground coal mining shuttle cars. In addition, we conducted an exploratory analysis of how users of the more difficult, second-order system changed their behavior over time. BACKGROUND Evidence from the visuom...

Australia has a long history of underground mining. Even with advances in open cut mining equipment, techniques and economics, many orebodies are still best mined by underground means. In addition, modern exploration tools are ‘uncovering’ orebodies that are at increasing depths. South African mines are currently producing from below 3 km, and developing down to 5 km depths – it is likely that ...

In this paper we consider the problem of optimising the construction and haulage costs of underground mining networks. We focus on a model of underground mine networks consisting of ramps in which each ramp has a bounded maximum gradient. The cost depends on the lengths of the ramps, the tonnages hauled through them and their gradients. We model such an underground mine network as an edgeweight...

Conventional mine site investigation has difficulties in fostering location awareness and understanding the subsurface environment; moreover, it produces a large amount of hardcopy data. To overcome these limitations, the UMineAR mobile tablet application was developed. It enables users to rapidly identify underground mine objects (drifts, entrances, boreholes, hazards) and intuitively visualiz...

Fatal accidents associated with underground coal mines require the implementation of high-level gas monitoring and miner’s localization approaches to promote underground safety and health. This study introduces a real-time monitoring, event-reporting and early-warning platform, based on cluster analysis for outlier detection, spatiotemporal statistical analysis, and an RSS range-based weighted ...