The AMIRA P884 PRIMO project (2007-2010) sought to develop a framework for ‘rapid, automated and comparative’ analysis of underground mining projects at a strategic level. Stope Optimisation was one of the four key areas for that project. A new approach to stope optimisation was developed in the PRIMO project, incorporating a stope shape annealing technique, based on background IP from Alford Mining Systems. A first commercial release of the software to sponsors has now been made. All of the three sponsoring suppliers in the PRIMO project delivered a solution integrated into their mining software based on the optimisation engine.The requirements for these tools have evolved from individual case studies. It is now recognised that there is a need to more clearly define the general set of requirements for stope design, and to extend the software capability to deal with more complex scenarios. This will include the range of stoping methods employed in the industry, styles of mineralisation and consideration of geological risk associated with probabilistic block models.

Industry sponsors have identified the need for greater levels of detail and improved stope design solutions for medium and short term planning. The optimisation techniques employed will be amenable to more complex stope shapes, and additional design criteria that will follow as greater levels of detail are modelled and optimised. The choice of optimisation criteria, cutoff, penalties and shape geometry parameterisation can all be extended further.

All of these requirements will be considered in P1037 Optimisation of Stope Design and Stope Layouts. The research team of Alford Mining Systems and AMC Consultants brings together the research capability and the practical industry experience to extend and apply the results demonstrated in the stope portion of the PRIMO project.

Contact: Matthew Dalziel at [email protected]