Three-dimensional geological modeling and its application in Digital Mine

Abstract

The 3D geological modeling is the prerequisite and core foundation for Digital Mine. Although this new technology brings new opportunities and motivation for the mineral exploration industry, it still has many difficulties to be solved in this area. Based on the characteristics of mine data and the aim of Digital Mine construction, this paper introduces a theory including multi-source data coupling, multi-modeling methods integration, multi-resolution visualization and detection, and multidimensional data analysis and application. By analyzing problems such as the uncertainty in each step of the modeling process, we designed a novel modeling method that can be applied to the complex geological body modeling, mineral resource/reserve estimation, and the mining exploration engineering. Along with the process of mine exploration, development, and reclamation, 3D modeling undergoes the process of “construction-simulation-revision” during which the 3D model is able to be dynamically updated and gradually improved. Based on the result of practical utilization, it is proven that the methodology introduced by this paper can be used to build an effective 3D model by fully using the mining data under the control of spatial information quality evaluation. Our experiments show that such a 3D model can be used to evaluate the mine resource and provide the scientific evidence to improve mining efficiency during the various stages of evolvement process in mine.