Underground Mine Design Enhancements in Vulcan 9

Completing an underground mine design is not a straightforward task. Multiple external mining factors, and ever-changing geotechnical and geological conditions will affect the mine design layout. In Vulcan 9, users will see enhancements to a few critical components of underground mine design.

Vulcan underground mine design tools can accurately simulate the required underground development and ring stope layouts, as well as implementation and operations phases. They allow the mine planner to accurately estimate the mining costs that will be endured, and optimise the results to allow for best mining practices. The enhancements made to existing underground tools in Vulcan will maximise flexibility, increase productivity and save time.

These include:

• New Centre Line Tool – This tool allows for easy scenario analysis of the required access development that would determine the most viable layout of declines and ramps.

• Multiple Attributes assignment – This new tool provides the option to add additional attributes to design objects through the automatic rules assignment, including: Cost type, Mining Level, Rock Type, Ore type, Mining Areas, and Excavation type.

• New UG Design Panels – The new underground panels have been created to allow for better streamlining of the design workflow.

• Ring Design – New ring design enhancements automate stope creation and adhere to setup stope parameters. This eliminates tedious manual work previously needed to create stope shapes and stope sectioning.

• Automatic Ring Section Creation – This tool is enhanced to enable users with the ability to create mining stope shapes from a solid triangulation by using the ring sectioning tool. This eliminates the time-consuming manual creation of the stopes that was previously required.

The underground mine design process does not have to be a daunting task. In Vulcan 9, mining layouts and ring stope creation are simplified. This will maximise design efficiency, saving users time, minimising project risk, and allowing them to focus on downstream processes.

For more information about Vulcan 9 or to schedule a demonstration, contact your local Maptek office.