دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله تعیین کمیت توده سنگ در یک معدن نیکل زیرزمینی عمیق (نشریه الزویر 2016)

تعیین کمیت توده سنگ در یک معدن نیکل زیرزمینی عمیق

Quantifying rock mass bulking at a deep underground nickel mine

1 Introduction

In deep underground mining and construction, high stress-induced rock fracturing is inevitable.1 Rock near the boundary of an excavation is confined in the tangential direction, and the volume increase due to rock failure is often translated into a significant convergence of the excavation boundary, and this phenomenon is known as rock mass bulking.2 Fig. 1 shows how the periphery of an excavation can deform from the original shape (shown as a dashed line) to a new shape (shown as the solid interior line), as a result of an increase in volume of the shaded failed zone. Rock mass bulking can cause problems when the wall displacement exceeds the displacement capacity of the support elements.3,4 In extreme cases the wall deformation can be very large, reducing the effective span of the drift and making the drift unsuitable for mining access. Thus, it is important to predict and manage rock mass bulking when mining in highly stressed grounds.

2- Geological setting and description of the observation site

2-1 Geological setting

Creighton Mine, which is owned and operated by Vale, is a deep underground nickel mine located in the Sudbury Basin. The mine has been in continuous production for more than a century with current active mining levels at depths of 2.3–2.5 km. The mine is seismically active8 and managing seismic risk and controlling rockburst damage are challenging tasks facing the mine as mining progresses to deeper levels.

Creighton Mine is located in the southeast corner of an embayment of a nickel irruptive into the footwall rocks. In general, the lower norite member of the main irruptive is the hangingwall of the orebody. The footwall rocks are metavolcanics of the Elsie Mountain Formation, Lower Huronian in age and intruded by granite/gabbros. The orebody (OB) at depth is generally steeply dipping within high grade massive and inclusion massive sulfides adjacent to the barren granites and gabbros and a gradational lower grade hangingwall zone. Structurally controlled, the orebody has gradually shifted into two distinct production areas below the 2340 m production level. Massive and inclusion massive sulphides are high grade and copper rich, considerable shearing and quartz veining exists throughout the third production front at depth. Quartz veining and shearing, often infilled with quartz carbonate, is typically inter-connected through the footwall rocks by a family of distinct splays, influencing how mining-induced stresses are redistributed and contribute to mine seismicity.