Conventional Drill- Blast

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 Mechanical Excavation

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Mechanical Excavation can be considered the removal of
rock from in-situ by mechanical means. Several groups of
equipment will be considered in this section. Applicable for
Surface and Underground mining.

Mechanical Excavation Basics

The two main types of mechanical breakage for
production purposes include indenters and drag bits
(also known as picks). Both are considered to break the
rock in the primary breaking process. The main difference
between indenters and drag bits is that an indenter breaks
rock by applying a force that is predominantly in a
direction normal to the rock surface. Comparatively, a
sharp drag bit applies the main force in a direction
predominantly parallel to the rock surface. The breaking
mechanism for both is actually a tensile fracture.
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 Surface Miners
Surface Miner combines the individual processes
normally associated with traditional technology,
such as drilling, blasting or tearing, extraction,
transportation, crushing and loading. In particular,
the fact that blasting is no longer required leads to
a considerable reduction in environmental
pollution from, gasses, dust, noise and flying
rocks. Selective mining of thin or sloping layers
results in a clear separation of material
(overburden, minerals etc.).

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 Surface Miners
Eliminating dilution increases the efficiency of
transportation and further processing. Surface
Miners are capable of continuously mining
stone with 50 MPa or 100 MPa, irrespective of
discontinuities and without blasting. This
includes: lignite, coal, anthracite ,bauxite ,
marl, limestone ,hard sediment stone
(sandstone, certain conglomerates, breccias
clays, loam).
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 Figure 1. Various aspects of a Surface miner
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 Surface Miner

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 Figure 2. Auger Machine
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 Bucket wheel excavators (BWE)
Originally designed for relatively easy digging
materials (gravel, sand, loam, marl, clays, and
lignite's), bucket wheel excavators (BWEs) can
now dig in relatively hard material. These have
included compact sediments such as shale's, black
coal, some limes tones, and tar sands. One of the
most successful applications of BWEs has been in
German and Australian lignite mines. The machine
digs out the material using a large wheel with
buckets that revolve as the wheel turns.

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The teeth on the individual buckets are the primary
ground engaging tools that break out the material
from the ground. BWEs are most often attached to
a conveyor network where waste material is sent
to a spreader or to an ore stockpile. BWE
considerations:
Hard consolidated materials, large boulders or
blocky material cannot be handled Sticky material
build up in buckets and can gum up the conveyor
(although, with modern systems, sticky material
can be handled);
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 Advantages of Continuous Excavators
 Have lower impact loading than comparable single-bucket machines
 Tends to reduce dynamic stresses, machine mass, maintenance costs,
power consumption
 Reduced slewing (swing) speed, reduced digging impacts, reduction
in ground bearing pressure
 BWE can mine both thin overburden and deeper overburden
Largest disadvantage is their size, which limits flexibility. Therefore the
mine must have strict discipline in terms of the mine plan, such as:
 Sufficient reserves to justify the capital cost.
 Relatively horizontal stratification over a wide area of the deposit.
 Uniform geologic conditions (i.e. absence of major faulting, severe
undulations, large variations in overburden thickness)
 The digging face should be stable
 Very limited flexibility (can be flexible in certain geological and
equipment situations)
 High capital costs but may be the most economical method of mining
weak flat tabular deposits
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 Figure 3. Bucket Wheel Excavator(BWE)
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 Bucket Wheel Excavator(BWE)

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 Dozers and Ripping
Dozers can be utilized for ground preparation when using a ripper,
which is mounted to the rear of the tractor. Rippers are used widely
in civil engineering projects to excavate slopes and wide swaths of
surface area.
Rippers are used in quarries to excavate sand and gravel deposits.
Rippers are also used to some extent in mining for surface
preparation and in coal production. In the ripping process, the
ripper shank is pulled through the soil or rock to loosen or fragment
the material, which can then be loaded by a scraper or front-end
loader, or handled by the dozer blade. Ripping is an inexpensive
method of breaking discontinuous ground or soft rock masses.
Figure 4, shows a ripper in action (back of dozer). In this operation,
the dozer excavates the exposed coal and pushes the loosened
material into windrows. Front-end loaders then load the material
into haul trucks.
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 Ripper

Figure 4. Dozers and Ripping

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 Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM)
This type of machine can be used to drive circular
tunnels from 5.7 ft (1.75 m) to more than 36 ft (11
m) in diameter in rock types that range from weak,
loosely consolidated to very strong and abrasive.
In almost all cases breakage is effectuated by
roller cutters mounted on the cutting head, as seen
in Figure 5, Because these cutters break the rock
by indentation, these machines are characterized
by very high thrust requirements. This thrust is
provided by hydraulic rams that press the cutter
head into the rock face.
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The thrust reaction force is reacted through
gripper pads that are pressed hydraulically
against the tunnel walls. The rock broken
from the face by the cutters falls to the floor
where it is scooped into buckets mounted
around the gage of the cutter head. This
debris is lifted in the buckets to the tunnel
crown, whereupon it is tipped on to a belt
conveyor that runs through the center of the
machine.

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11/04/2010 Figure 5. Tunnel
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 TBM MACHINE

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 Figure 6. Continuous Miner
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 Continuous Miner

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 Raise / Blind hole / Shaft Boring Machines
These machines use the same button roller cutter
technology as TBMs, but they drive vertical or steeply
inclined holes rather than tunnels. Raise Borers are
machines used to produce a circular excavation either
between two existing levels in an underground mine or
between the surface and an existing level. The process of
raise boring is shown in Figure 7,
First, the boring machine is set up on the upper level, and
a small-diameter (of the order of 9 in. or 230 mm) pilot
hole is drilled, usually with a tri cone bit, down to the
lower level. When this hole is completed, the drill bit is
removed, at the lower level, and replaced by a reamer
head having a diameter with the same dimension as the
desired excavation. The rock debris falls by gravity into
the lower excavation where it is removed.

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Raise / Blind hole / Shaft Boring Machines

11/04/2010 Figure 7. Raise

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In addition, however, this raising system offers other significant advantages,
such as:
 More safety than conventional drill-and-blast.
 Improved excavation rates
 Improved productivity.
 Circular shape combined with the lack of blasting damage results in an
excavation of greater strength and integrity than a hand-driven raise.
 Reduced friction for ventilation raises.
Table 1. Application of Raise Boring Machine in Mining and Civil

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11/04/2010 Figure 8. Road
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 Road Header

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11/04/2010 Figure 9. Shearer
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