Safety Problem Of Cavity Under Open Pit Bench

Abstract

Abstract Some open pits in China are severely threatened by hidden cavities under benches which are always inaccessible and unmapped. The first thing to be well considered is safe and precise cavity detection, as the conventional detection methods cannot output a clear cavity vision, a three-dimensional laser measurement system is employed to perform detection, which is deployed from the surface through boreholes. The results from the scanner demonstrated very well the detailed level of information that can be collected in a cavity using this method, with the cavities’ layout under various benches being fully mapped. As detected cavities are always in horizontal and vaulted roof shape, two different theoretical calculation methods are proposed to analyze the cap rock stability for different roof shape. And also, the three-dimensional solid model generated through scanned laser data is used for stability numerical simulation by converting the data format into the one that recognized in corresponding software. Furthermore, acoustic emission technique is adopted to carry out long term real time rupture monitoring in cap rock, and four kinds of typical monitoring results are discussed which represent the rupture behavior in cap rock of unstable cavity, stable cavity, cavity with large working drill above and cavity beside explosion site. Thus, a complete safety evaluation system for such cavity will be established to ensure safe operation above.