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...

Open pit mine production scheduling is a computationally expensive large-scale mixed-integer linear programming problem. This research develops efficient algorithm to solve open problems under uncertain geological parameters. The proposed solution approach for two-stage process. stochastic problem iteratively solved in the first stage after relaxing resource constraints using parametric graph c...

Applications of operations research to mine planning date back to the 1960s. Since that time, optimization and simulation, in particular, have been applied to both surface and underground mine planning problems, including mine design, longand short-term production scheduling, equipment selection, and dispatching, inter alia. In this paper, we review several decades of such literature with a par...

Recently, the mining industry has introduced renewable energy technologies to resolve power supply problems at mines operating in polar regions or other remote areas, and to foster substitute industries, able to benefit from abandoned sites of exhausted mines. However, little attention has been paid to the potential placement of floating photovoltaic (PV) systems operated on mine pit lakes beca...

In themining optimisation literature, most researchers focused on two strategic-level and tactical-level openpit mine optimisation problems, which are respectively termed ultimate pit limit (UPIT) or constrained pit limit (CPIT). However, many researchers indicate that the substantial numbers of variables and constraints in realworld instances (e.g., with 50–1000 thousand blocks) make the CPIT’...

The block economic value (BEV) of a single-metal deposit is calculated based on the metal content and the related costs. The common methods available for calculating BEV are just based upon the profitable elements, and the effects of undesirable elements on BEV are not considered. However, in multi-element deposits, the effects of other elements existing in the blocks on BEV should be considere...

Stockpiling and blending play a major role in maintaining the quantity and quality of the raw materials fed into processing plants, especially the cement, iron ore and steel making, and coal-fired power generation industries that usually require a much uniformed feed. Due to the variable nature of such materials, they even come from the same source and the produced ores or concentrates are seld...

Nowadays, shovels play an important role in production of open pit mines and their failures result in significant production loss and considerable increase in maintenance costs. Therefore, reliability and risk analysis can help to improve production, productivity and reduce production costs. In this study, reliability of electric cable shovel of Chadormalu iron ore mine in Iran was investigated...