Abstract
Mineral reserve estimation and mining design depend on a precise modeling of the mineralized deposit. A multi-step interpolation algorithm, including 1D biharmonic spline estimator for interpolating floor altitudes, 2D nearest neighbor, linear, natural neighbor, cubic, biharmonic spline, inverse distance weighted, simple kriging, and ordinary kriging interpolations for grade distribution on the two vertical sections at roadways, and 3D linear interpolation for grade distribution between sections, was proposed to build a 3D grade distribution model of the mineralized seam in a longwall mining panel with a U-shaped layout having two roadways at both sides. Compared to field data from exploratory boreholes, this multi-step interpolation using a natural neighbor method shows an optimal stability and a minimal difference between interpolation and field data. Using this method, the 97,576 m3 of bauxite, in which the mass fraction of Al2O3 (Wa) and the mass ratio of Al2O3 to SiO2 (Wa/s) are 61.68% and 27.72, respectively, was delimited from the 189,260 m3 mineralized deposit in the 1102 longwall mining panel in the Wachangping mine, Southwest China. The mean absolute errors, the root mean squared errors and the relative standard deviations of errors between interpolated data and exploratory grade data at six boreholes are 2.544, 2.674, and 32.37% of Wa; and 1.761, 1.974, and 67.37% of Wa/s, respectively. The proposed method can be used for characterizing the grade distribution in a mineralized seam between two roadways at both sides of a longwall mining panel.
Highlights
Ore reserve estimations and mining designs of underground mines depend on precise three-dimensional modeling of the mineralized seam for achieving the position coordinate description and the grade distribution of the mineral
The total volume of the bauxite deposit in the 1102 longwall mining panel exposed by the tail and head roadways is 189,260 m3
Corresponding to the different interpolation methods, the average grades expressed by W a and W a/s vary from 53.15% to 56.32% and from 17.38% to 18.28%, respectively
Summary
Ore reserve estimations and mining designs of underground mines depend on precise three-dimensional modeling of the mineralized seam for achieving the position coordinate description and the grade distribution of the mineral. When the sample points have a regular distribution, for example on a rectangular mesh grid, many methods are available for continuous and smooth interpolation [20]. The methods mentioned above are less satisfactory in depicting the thin and anfractuous stratiform deposit, and it is difficult to achieve a smooth and exact interpolation from exceedingly irregular distributions and large variations of sample data. For the 1102 panel in the Wachangping bauxite mine, the irregular sampling data with large variations in the strike-altitude coordinate frame, measured in the two roadways on both sides of the panel, were mapped into a regular rectangular mesh grid in the strike-height coordinate frame by subtracting floor altitudes at sampling locations from corresponding sampling altitudes. The proposed method is applicable to estimate the grade distribution in a mineralized seam in which a longwall mining panel with U-shaped layout is used to perform the mining operations
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