Combined mine tremors source location and error evaluation in the Lubin Copper Mine (Poland)

Abstract

A modified method of mine tremors location used in Lubin Copper Mine is presented in the paper. In mines where an intensive exploration is carried out a high accuracy source location technique is usually required. The effect of the flatness of the geophones array, complex geological structure of the rock mass and intense exploitation make the location results ambiguous in such mines. In the present paper an effective method of source location and location's error evaluations are presented, combining data from two different arrays of geophones. The first consists of uniaxial geophones spaced in the whole mine area. The second is installed in one of the mining panels and consists of triaxial geophones. The usage of the data obtained from triaxial geophones allows to increase the hypocenter vertical coordinate precision. The presented two-step location procedure combines standard location methods: P-waves directions and P-waves arrival times. Using computer simulations the efficiency of the created algorithm was tested. The designed algorithm is fully non-linear and was tested on the multilayered rock mass model of the Lubin Copper Mine, showing a computational better efficiency than the traditional P-wave arrival times location algorithm. In this paper we present the complete procedure that effectively solves the non-linear location problems, i.e. the mine tremor location and measurement of the error propagation.