Ground support and strata monitoring: what is needed?

Abstract

With the ever-moving challenge to increase safety and productivity in mines, the ability to understand what your strata is doing in 'real-time' is incredibly important. New technologies need to be developed to allow time efficient monitoring of strata behaviour over the excavations desired life, along with the condition of ground support systems and how effectively they are functioning. Monitoring systems play an important function in maintaining the safe operation of underground mines. This paper will review technologies currently available; those being utilised and the effectiveness of such systems. Key desired outputs will be investigated along with the constraints of available technologies. To assist the underground mining industry to continue evolving in this area, an overview of digital trends will be provided as a guide to the direction for current and future technology developments.

The ground support life cycle considering real time ground-consumption monitoring

“…A comprehensive review of instrumentation options is given in numerous publications (e.g. Dawn 2019;Roach et al 2019;Vallati 2020). For a variety of reasons, some of which are discussed later in the paper, to date, none have achieved broad industry implementation.…”

xCell Cyclops: a new technology for an efficient way of monitoring convergence in underground mines

“…Ground support and strata monitoring technologies are following the digital transformation. Vallati et al (2020) reviewed new technological trends in ground support monitoring, identifying two main disruptive technologies. The first is the use of LiDAR scanning, which, when paired with robotics or drones, allows for a very efficient monitoring method.…”

Monitoring of rock mass movement using a distributed array of wi-fi enabled extensometers

“…The analogue Rock-IT (Figure 1) is used for monitoring rock mass movements associated with traditional short (2-3 m) and long (6-10 m) support elements and providing a real-time visual reading to mining personnel. Mechanical extensometers provide a reliable and accurate measurement, however, they rely on mine personnel to monitor and record data, and 'keeping track of the measurement from these devices is an enormous workload because of the large number of units deployed' (Vallati et al 2020).…”