Application of Optimisation techniques in open pit mining

Abstract

The economic viability of the modern day mine is highly dependent on careful planning and management. Declining trends in average ore grades, increasing mining costs and environmental considerations will ensure that this situation will remain in the foreseeable future. The operation and management of a large open pit mine having a life of several (5-50) years is an enormous and complex task. Optimisation techniques can be successfully applied to resolve a number of important problems that arise in the planning and management of a mine. These applications include ore-body modelling and ore-reserve estima- tion; the design of optimum pits; the determination of optimal production schedules; the determination of optimal operating layouts; the determination of optimal blends; the determination of equipment maintenance and replacement policies; the determination of an efficient mine site rehabilitation program; the determination of the best choice of equipment (trucks, loaders) for the mining operations and a range of logistics problems such as the design and efficient operation of a transport and logistic network to support the mining operations. This chapter discusses some of these applications. In particular, we focus on: the design of optimum pits and the mine-scheduling problem.