Review of the Mining Adjustments to the In-Situ Rock Mass Rating (IRMR) and their impact on cavability assessment

As the attention on mining of large orebodies by low-cost underground methods has increased, cave mining (block and panel caving) and other related methods like sub-level caving have become one of the preferred approaches. However, one of the main challenge of this method is realistic prediction of the undercut dimension at which caving will initiate and propagate. For this purpose, a good understanding of the rock mass and mining induced factors is crucial.
This research will focus on one of the most used rock mass classification systems and its adjustment factors, with the aim of reducing the subjectivity and producing a standardized guide for its application during caving assessments. The research will focus on data collection from existing projects and numerical modeling to calibrate and quantify the influence of the mining adjustments to different rock masses. This research will represent a contribution to cavability prediction for early stages of a project when the data is still limited, and mining method is under evaluation.

Faculty Supervisor:

Davide Elmo

Student:

Partner:

SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Mining

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: