Villa, D & Diering, T 2010, 'A new mine planning tool for sublevel caving mines', in Y Potvin (ed.), Caving 2010: Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, pp. 237-251, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1002_15_Villa
(https://papers.acg.uwa.edu.au/p/1002_15_Villa/)
Abstract: This paper presents an overview of a new application specifically developed for the planning and scheduling of sublevel caving (SLC) projects and operations. Conventional mine planning software tools are not well suited to the evaluation of this type of deposit due to their inability to model the dilution behaviour.

The overall purpose of this application is to enable a user to schedule a deposit effectively and efficiently for the feasibility of mining using the SLC method. Much of the logic in the module is similar in concept to that used in Gemcom’s PCBC software (Diering, 2000) for block cave operations. Tools for layout generation of tunnels and rings provide a basis for the subsequent generation of production schedules. Ore recovery and dilution modelling are included, but rely strongly on reasonable calibration against historic mining or other models such as REBOP (Itasca Consulting Group, 2000) (REBOP is a code for rapid simulation of the flow of fragmented rock in cave mining operations based on PFC, Particle Flow).

Some examples are provided showing either small test cases of a few rings or larger problems of several thousand rings.