Abstract
Drilling is the first stage of open pit mining that has a considerable effect on the other stages of mining, including blasting, loading, hauling and crushing. An unsuitable drilling pattern may lead to undesirable results such as poor fragmentation, back break and fly rock that not only results in technical and safety issues but also increases the operating cost of the mine. Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) methods can be useful approaches to select the appropriate drilling pattern among various alternatives, performed previously. This paper aims to select the most proper drilling and blasting pattern for Sangan Iron Mine, Iran. To achieve this, in the first step, rock fragmentation, back break, fly rock, specific charge and specific drilling were considered as the decision criteria and their degree of importance was calculated using the AHP method under a fuzzy environment. Then, TOPSIS and PROMETHEE methods were used to select the most proper alternative. The results of this study show that the drilling pattern with a spacing of 5 m, burden 4 m, hole depth 10 m, and hole diameter 15 cm is the most suitable one. The stemming length and powder factor of the suggested pattern are 2.3 m and 2.6 gr/cm3, respectively.
Highlights
Drilling and blasting play a vital role in mining projects
The application of the liner assignment method showed that the pattern with a burden of 3.5 m, spacing of 4.5 m, stemming of 3.8 m and hole length of 12.1 m was selected as the most suitable pattern (Yari et al 2015, 2017). These results indicate that, a single Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) method is not efficient to enable a complete and correct analysis and to obtain a more reliable result, two or more methods should be used by utilizing the strengths of each one
This paper aims to integrate the fuzzy-Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)-TOPSIS and the fuzzy-AHP-PROMETHEE methods for the selection of the most proper drilling pattern for the Sangan Iron Ore mine in Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran
Summary
Drilling and blasting play a vital role in mining projects. The quality of the blasting operation and subsequently, the adequate rock fragmentation are effective parameters that have a considerable effect on the mine productivity (Shi et al 2012). The main aim of drilling and blasting pattern (DBP) selection is to reduce the costs of rock crushing and improve the operational effectiveness. This paper aims to integrate the fuzzy-AHP-TOPSIS and the fuzzy-AHP-PROMETHEE methods for the selection of the most proper drilling pattern for the Sangan Iron Ore mine in Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran. This section is devoted to representing the steps of the fuzzy AHP, TOPSIS, and PROMETHEE, as the most applied MADM methods in selection problems
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
