Pit slopes in weathered and weak rocks

doi:10.36487/ACG_rep/1308_0.1_Martin

Authors: Martin, CD; Stacey, PF

DOI https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1308_0.1_Martin

Cite As:
Martin, CD & Stacey, PF 2013, 'Pit slopes in weathered and weak rocks', in PM Dight (ed.), Slope Stability 2013: Proceedings of the 2013 International Symposium on Slope Stability in Open Pit Mining and Civil Engineering, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, pp. 3-28, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1308_0.1_Martin

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Abstract:
The ‘Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design’ developed as part of the Large Open Pit (LOP) project was published in 2009. The guidelines were focused on hard rocks in open pit mines so did not address design issues for pit slopes in materials generally classed as weak rocks. Research currently being undertaken by the LOP sponsors is directed at filling this gap. Canvassing of the LOP sponsors and their affiliates resulted in identifying pit slope issues in five general categories of weak rocks: Establishing the strength of hard rocks is traditionally approached using rock mass classifications and the Hoek−Brown failure criterion. However, there is ample evidence that these approaches do not capture the strength characteristics and the failure processes evident in weak rocks. In this paper the authors describe some of the processes that should be considered when attempting to establish the strength and failure envelopes input into slope designs for open pits in weak rocks.

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