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Conference Proceedings

The Australasian Ground Control Conference An ISRM Regional Symposium (AusRock Conference) 2022

Conference Proceedings

The Australasian Ground Control Conference An ISRM Regional Symposium (AusRock Conference) 2022

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Optimal slope profiles for maximum mine pit-wall steepness in banded iron formation rocks

The Overall Slope Angle (OSA) of pitwalls plays a crucial role in the financial return of an open pit mine. In current practice, pitwall profiles are designed to be planar in cross-section within each rock layer, ie the profile inclination across each layer tends to be constant. A new slope design software, OptimalSlope, has been recently proposed to determine the geotechnically optimal profile shapes for the pitwalls of mines. OptimalSlope seeks the solution of a mathematical optimisation problem where the overall steepness of the pitwall to be designed is maximised for an assigned stratigraphy, rock properties (unit weight and strength) and Factor of Safety. The geometry of the benches is provided as input to OptimalSlope. The results obtained so far on three mine case studies in isotropic rock masses (Utili et al, 2022; Agosti et al, 2021a, 2021b) show that optimal profiles are up to 5° steeper than their planar counterparts – ie the planar profiles exhibiting the same FoS – leading to realising significant saving on waste rock and as a consequence Net Present Value increments and carbon footprint reductions. OptimalSlope algorithms have been modified to deal with anisotropic rock masses characterised by direction dependent shear strength.
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  • Optimal slope profiles for maximum mine pit-wall steepness in banded iron formation rocks
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  • Published: 2022
  • Pages: 5
  • PDF Size: 0.516 Mb.
  • Unique ID: P-02416-T8X7P4

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