Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
the reserve. Secondly, fully supported methods using intact, elastic pillars, are limited economically to low stress settings, or orebodies with high rock mass strength.
Finally, thick seams and orebodies consisting of relatively weak rock masses may
be mined more appropriately and productively in successive phases which are themselves based on different design principles, rather than in a single phase of supported
mining.
The usual problem in a pre-feasibility study, preliminary design or initial design of
a supported mining layout is selection of an appropriate pillar strength formula and
of relevant values for a characteristic strength parameter and the scaling exponents.
A reasonable approach may be to employ equation 13.14 to estimate pillar strength,
using the values of K , C1 and C2 proposed in Section 13.3. Improved values for
these parameters may then be established as mining progresses in the orebody, by
observations of pillar response to mining, or by large-scale in situ tests. Judicious
reduction in dimensions of selected pillars may be performed in these large-scale
tests, to induce pillar failure.
13.5
The discussion of pillar design using the tributary area method assumed implicitly
that a pillars support capacity for the country rock was limited by the strength of
the orebody rock. Where hangingwall and footwall rocks are weak relative to the
orebody rock, a pillar support system may fail by punching of pillars into the orebody
peripheral rock. The mode of failure is analogous to bearing capacity failure of a
foundation and may be analysed in a similar way. This type of local response will be
accompanied by heave of oor rock adjacent to the pillar lines, or extensive fretting
and collapse of roof rock around a pillar.
The load applied by a pillar to footwall or hangingwall rock in a stratiform orebody
may be compared directly with a distributed load applied on the surface of a halfspace. Schematic and conceptual representations of this problem are provided in
Figure 13.19. Useful methods of calculating the bearing capacity, qb , of a cohesive,
frictional material such as soft rock are given by Brinch Hansen (1970). Bearing
capacity is expressed in terms of pressure or stress. For uniform strip loading on a
half-space, bearing capacity is given by classical plastic analysis as
qb = 12 wp N + cNc
(13.22)
where is the unit weight of the loaded medium, c is the cohesion and Nc and N
are bearing capacity factors.
The bearing capacity factors are dened, in turn, by
Nc = (Nq 1) cot
N = 1.5(Nq 1) tan
Figure 13.19 Model of yield of
country rock under pillar load, and
load geometry for estimation of bearing capacity.
390
Equation 13.22 describes the bearing capacity developed under a long rib pillar.
For pillars of length lp , the expression for bearing capacity is modied to reect the
changed pillar plan shape; i.e.
qb = 12 wp N S + c cot Nq Sq c cot
(13.23)
13.6
The history of mining the uranium-bearing orebodies of the Elliot Lake district of
western Ontario, Canada, is interesting because of the evolution of the mining layout
and rock response as mining progressed down dip. Rock mechanics aspects of mine
performance have been described by Hedley and Grant (1972) and Hedley et al.
(1984). More than 30 years observations of roof and pillar performance are recorded
for the orebodies.
As described by Hedley et al. (1984), the conglomerate stratiform orebodies at
Elliot Lake are set on the north and south limbs of a broad syncline. Figure 13.20 is a
northsouth cross section, looking east, showing the Quirke and Denison mines on the
north limb. The orebodies are from 3 m to 8 m thick and dip south at about 15 20 ,
persisting to a depth of 1050 m. They are separated from the basement rock by a
quartzite bed, and overlain successively by beds of quartzite, argillite, a massive 250
m bed of quartzite, and conglomerate and limestone formations. Although the orebody
rock is unbedded, the hangingwall contact is commonly a prominent bedding plane
with an argillaceous parting. Diabase dykes and numerous normal faults transgress
the orebodies, and several thrust faults are prominent features. The rock material
strengths of the orebody, footwall and hangingwall rocks are generally greater than
200 MPa. The pre-mining state of stress is dened by a vertical principal stress, v ,
equal to the depth stress, an eastwest horizontal stress about 1.5 v , and a northsouth
component about equal to v .
At the Quirke Mine, the mining method resembled that shown in Figure 12.2, with
transport drifts developed along strike, at 47 m vertical intervals. This resulted in
stopes with a down-dip dimension of about 76 m. Crown and sill pillars protected
the rail haulages. Rib pillars, instead of the scattered, irregularly shaped panel pillars
shown in Figure 12.2, separated the stopes which were mined up dip from the haulage
level.
391