Garces, D, Rebolledo, H & Miranda, P 2020, 'Incorporating vulnerability of hang-ups and secondary breaking to drawpoints availability for short-term cave plans, El Teniente mine', in R Castro, F Báez & K Suzuki (eds), MassMin 2020: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference & Exhibition on Mass Mining, University of Chile, Santiago, pp. 988-1001, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_repo/2063_71
(https://papers.acg.uwa.edu.au/p/2063_71_Garces/)
Abstract: Block and panel caving are increasingly considered as suitable massive underground methods for mining large, deep and competent orebodies. Currently, one of the main challenges in cave mines is the compliance to high daily production rates without putting aside cave management measures. This is a crucial cave concept to incorporate into short-term planning since a lack of cave management may cause significant issues in geomechanics, caving initiation and propagation, cave flow and incorporation rate. This paper focuses on developing a methodology to estimate drawpoint availability uncertainty taking into account hang-up frequency and secondary breaking as key operational variables for short-term planning. Mine data regarding daily draw, hang-ups at drawpoints and secondary breakage activities are gathered from El Teniente mine to determine probability distribution functions of each studied variable. These probability distributions are combined with Monte Carlo simulation for assessing monthly cave productions at the study area. The results obtained herein are of great importance since this method provides a measure of the monthly production compliance. Moreover, the research allows for the identification of drawpoints prone to low availability, in where planned decisions and operational effort may lead to mitigating vulnerabilities of cave production plans.