Acoustic Evaluation of Mine Sidewall Safety

The structural integrity of mine tunnels is critical to worker safety as failures (e.g. rock falls) can cause injury or death. This project aims to determine whether it is feasible to automatically evaluate the safety of side walls in potash mines using the sound produced when the wall is struck by a metal bar. Previous work has indicated that this method is feasible for mine roofs, but it is unclear whether this will work for the mine’s side walls.
This project will collect a number of recordings of impact sounds over a range of locations within a mine and over an extended period of time (in which we can expect some walls to fail if not maintained). We will then measure the difference in recorded sound over time and attempt to correlate these differences to failures. Finally, a machine learning model will be used to try to automatically predict impending failures.

Faculty Supervisor:

Travis Wiens

Student:

Partner:

PotashCorp

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing; Mining

University:

University of Saskatchewan

Program: