Abstract

BAI, X; MARCOTTE, D  and  SIMON, R. A heuristic sublevel stope optimizer with multiple raises. J. S. Afr. Inst. Min. Metall. [online]. 2014, vol.114, n.6, pp.427-434. ISSN 2411-9717.

A new heuristic sublevel mining stope optimizer is presented. The optimizer seeks the best locations and lengths of a series of vertical raises that, together with the blocks linked to each raise, define a mining stope. Five design constraints - the footwall angle, the hangingwall angle, the number of raises, the maximum distance of a block from a raise, and the minimum width required to move the farthest block towards the raise - allow the shape of the sub-stopes associated with each raise to be controlled. The optimization is done on the locations and lengths of raises using a genetic algorithm to efficiently sample the parameters' space. For each raise, a local network is defined in cylindrical coordinates around the raise such as to impose the design constraints. A maxflow algorithm on the local network is used to determine the optimal sub-stope for each raise. All sub-stopes are combined to define the global stope for the entire deposit. The best global stope is obtained using a genetic algorithm to find the raise parameters providing the best profit over the entire deposit. Two synthetic cases and one real deposit are used to evaluate the new algorithm and compare the results with the single-raise optimizer. The multiple raises approach leads to significantly improved economics compared with the single-raise stope optimizer, and the dilution is also substantially reduced compared to the single-raise case.

Keywords : underground mining; stope optimization; mining constraints; maximum flow algorithm; cylindrical coordinate transformation; multiple raises.

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