This blog explores underground mine monitoring methods, instrumentation, and techniques, including Encardio Rite, benefits of monitoring mines, solutions, and geotechnical sensors for mine monitoring.
Geotechnical Instruments have a monumental role to play in the continual productivity and safety of the mine, whether underground or on the surface. The geological formations are highly influenced and impacted by mining, and therefore, these formations also have an effect on mining.
Encardio Rite offers a variety of underground mine monitoring and open-pit monitoring instruments for the measurement of deformations, groundwater, strain, stress, and load. These monitoring sensors have proven to be extremely reliable and can work efficiently with high performance under harsh conditions. It provides accurate and important quantitative data regarding the behavior of the surrounding rock/ground, the performance of the ground support systems, the safety and stability of the underground mining work, and the excavation progress.
The online web-based underground mine monitoring service provided by Encardio Rite is well-equipped with automatic alerts and warning systems for the early detection of ground failures and other mishaps. The use of advanced technologies like automatic 3D deformation monitoring using ATS, laser scanning, and aerial surveys using drones makes for an infallible monitoring plan .
Benefits of Monitoring Mines
Underground mine monitoring and risk assessment have the following benefits:
1. Improve Safety – It helps to maintain safe operational systems and procedures and guard personnel, materials, nearby structures, communities, and the environment. If there is a potentially unstable ground, it provides timely alarms.
2. Economical – Geotechnical Instrument helps in the optimization of mine operations. For example, increasing the steepness of slopes to minimize waste removal and increase recovery of ore helps to keep an eye on the slope movement and the surrounding ground.
3. Control & Remedy – Having a mine monitoring plan assists in providing an alert on any expected failure zones, developing and designing appropriate remedial action plans, and safely evacuating the area without any life loss.
4. Confirm Designs – Evaluating the performance of the ground support system, stability of underground mining operations, and slope designs.
5. Assessing Impact of Natural Events – Produce accurate information and details of the impact of events such as earthquakes, excessive rainfall, etc to help minimize the risk associated.
6. Regulation compliance - To conform to the current and future standards & regulations for safety.
7. Future Understanding – Preserving a history of information helps to identify different rock/soil/slope behaviors over a long period of monitoring.
| Also Read: Consolidation of Soil: Instrumentation & Monitoring |
Underground Mine Monitoring Solutions
The Encardio Rite-Solutions for online monitoring of mines include:
• Geotechnical sensors measure all relevant and essential parameters in different types of mines.
• Automatic monitoring of geotechnical sensors with SDI-12 Digital interface using data loggers with GSM/GPRS telemetry.
• Automatic monitoring using LoRa nodes and gateways.
• Geodetic monitoring using automatic total stations (ATS) with GSM/GPRS telemetry
• Laser Scanning
• Using UAVs(Unmanned aerial vehicle) or drones for survey
• Making use of a Public cloud-based web data management service (WDMS) to provide online data with alarms to the authorized personnel at different locations.
The advances and progress in technology have enabled geotechnical instrumentation, geodetic survey, and data transmission systems to monitor the mining work performance from any remote location. Data Loggers and total stations pick up the reading from the installed sensors at selected intervals. If any of the readings are above the predetermined trigger values, an alarm or an SMS is sent to the authorities. All the data collected by the sensors are transmitted to a remote data management software, at a central server or cloud, where they are processed, evaluated, and presented. The same becomes accessible to the concerned authorities, at their desk or mobile devices through the World Wide Web.
| Also Read A Guide on Geodetic Survey and Monitoring |
Geotechnical Sensors for Mine Monitoring
Encardio Rite offers a variety of geotechnical sensors for surface and sub-surface online monitoring of mines. Let’s take a look at them:
Sub-surface
Open-pit mine: Horizontal Installation at the face of the excavation
Underground Mine: Vertically upward and near-horizontal installations inside the mine
Tailing dam, infill, and foundation
Open-pit, around excavation in slope stability investigations.
The underground mine, in rock mass around the excavation.
Surface Instruments
Open-pit – on anchors located in slopes
Underground mine – on anchors placed in rock mass around the excavation area
Underground mine – tunnel lining, in case of permanent tunnel construction
Long-distance pipelines conveying concentrates out from the mine to the processing plant
Notes regarding underground mine monitoring & instrumentation:
• Encardio Rite offers a variety of shielded armored/non-armored cables ranging from 2 to 40 cores for connecting sensors to the readout units. Splicing kits, junction boxes, switch boxes, protective enclosures, and covers, and lockable manhole covers are immediately available for the most simple to the most complex instrumentation schemes. Encardio also allows the reduction of cable lengths with the help of multiplexers, SDI-12 interface, and wireless transmission using the allowable RF band.
• Grouting is the most essential and crucial factor that affects the quality of readings post-installation. Since improper grouting cannot be fixed, experts should be involved in the grouting process for borehole instruments.
• There is a necessity for lightning protection as the field instruments are vulnerable to lightning damage and are placed with a high rate of lightning strikes. As the cable length increases, the risk also doubles. Most Encardio Rite sensors make use of tripolar plasma surge arresters to protect against voltage spikes in the input leads. However, an additional lightning protection system is still very much recommended. Engage a local agency specializing in earthing and lightning protection systems to implement the same.
• In cases where the field instrumentation is required to be connected to the client’s existing local network based on fiber optic cables, Encardio Rite provides ethernet interface NL2-1.
This brings us to the end of our article on underground mine monitoring and instrumentation. If you have any doubts, questions, or queries, feel free to comment below.
