Abstract
There are several good reasons for using backfill in underground stopes, including a reduction of mine wastes on the surface and the improvement of ground stability. Backfilling is now commonly used in underground operations worldwide, so practical methods are required to assess the stress state in stopes, on the surrounding rock mass and on support structures. The majority of existing analytical solutions for the stresses have been developed for vertical openings. In practice, stopes often have inclined walls, and this affects the stress state. Recent numerical studies have shown how the stresses distribution in inclined backfilled stopes is influenced by stope geometry and backfill strength. It has also been shown that existing analytical solutions do not capture the essential tendencies regarding these influence factors. In this paper, a new solution is proposed for the vertical and horizontal stresses in backfilled stopes with inclined walls. This solution takes into account the variation of the stresses along the opening height and width, including the difference between the hanging wall and footwall, for various inclination angles of the walls. Key results are presented and validated using recently performed numerical simulations.
Published Version
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