Generating Production Scenarios

In this series of articles so far, we have illustrated how an international copper mining company went about finding out the answer to a simple question: would it increase productivity and reduce operating costs of they changed the design of a new block-caving project to accommodate larger load-haul-dump (LHD) machines?

Now we are ready to tell you what the company discovered.

After using Dassault Systèmes’:

• parametric design tool to test the effect of the larger LHDs on their original mine design in a number of key parameters, such as tunnel section and spacing, pillar size and undercut and extraction level elevation
• PCBC mine planning software and other tools to automatically analyse selected parametric designs, calculate the economic reserve, and create a summary of average copper value, average economic value, and total tonnes extracted, and
• Abaqus geomechanical simulation software to analyse the geotechnical aspects of the deposit,

the company determined that the extraction strategy they had been pursuing in their selected designs was too fast. It was clear that they would need to extract material much more slowly into order to allow enough time for the cave to mature and propagate.

With that vital decision made, and new designs with a longer time period generated, the mine was ready for the final step: production simulations.

Production challenges

Relying on Dassault Systèmes’ Delmia production simulation tool, which can create 3D models of specific, discrete events, the company developed thousands of scenarios to visualise how equipment would move and interact under various mine designs.

This video,  for example, illustrates how a loader might move to a draw point, gather the material, and dump it into the ore pass.

This video of an open pit operation shows another type of equipment simulation (the basics are the same for block caving) available through DELMIA.

Simulations like these enable mine designers to evaluate a range of production-related issues, including equipment movement, and, in the case of the copper miner we have been focussing on through this series of articles, the effect of bigger or smaller equipment:

• Do the roads get more congested with larger LHDs?
• Will larger LHDs allow the mine to produce what they expect to produce?

Results

After the copper mining company ran these final production simulations, they had all the answers they needed to determine whether they should stick with their original design for a new block-caving project, or change it to accommodate new, larger LHD machines.

The larger LHDs won the day.

Summary

Through parametric design, automation, and simulation — which took a matter of hours rather than weeks to accomplish — the company was able to create a final mine design that took into account:

• optimal tunnel spacing, heights, and other parameters, including the offset between the tunnels and a geological structure at one end of the mine site, as well as draw-bell spacing and entry angles, ore pass locations, load elevations, etc.
• the best possible economic reserve, average copper value, average economic value, and total tonnes extracted
• geotechnical issues associated with the site in order to reduce the risks of poor caveability, large subsidence, air blasts, etc., and
• the most beneficial extraction strategy for the site.

The result was a smaller mine than the copper company originally designed, with a significantly slower extraction strategy than they anticipated.

Instead of being disappointed with these results, however, the company was delighted.

Created with Dassault Systèmes software and expertise, the new, smaller mine design for the block-caving site is estimated to:

• improve productivity by 20%
• reduce operating costs by 10%, and
• allow the company to save around $700 million US on the budget authorized for the original block-caving project with smaller LHDs.

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