Duan, Y, Luo, X, van de Werken, M, Dean, P & Elmouttie, M 2023, 'Numerical investigation of seismic source location using distributed acoustic sensing for rockfall monitoring', in PM Dight (ed.), SSIM 2023: Third International Slope Stability in Mining Conference, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, pp. 639-646, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_repo/2335_42
(https://papers.acg.uwa.edu.au/p/2335_42_Duan/)
Abstract: Accurate detection of rockfall trajectories in open pit mines is crucial for assessing the standoff designs and improving operational safety. In this research, we propose to apply seismic monitoring based on distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to locate the impact points of rockfalls on the slope to determine the rockfall trajectories. A numerical simulation is conducted to investigate the accuracy of the location of rockfall impact points. Synthetic DAS signals are created to simulate the rockfall-induced impacts and arrival times of the signals are picked for impact point location. The results demonstrate that by enabling dense sensing points along fibre optic cables, DAS can achieve more accurate locations of rockfall impact points compared with those obtained with traditional geophone networks. The improvement in depicting the rockfall trajectories using DAS with fibre optic cable will be further validated in an upcoming field experiment.

Keywords: distributed acoustic sensing, numerical simulation, seismic source location, rockfall monitoring