Mechanism,prevention,and control of mining-induced dynamic disasters in underground metal mines in China:Challenges and solutions

Metal mineral resources play an indispensable role in the development of the national economy.Dynamic disasters in underground metal mines seriously threaten mining safety,which are major scientific and technological problems to be solved urgently.In this article,the occurrence status and grand challenges of some typical dynamic disasters involving roof falling,spalling,collapse,large deformation,rockburst,surface subsidence,and water inrush in metal mines in China are systematically presented,the characteristics of mining-induced dynamic disasters are analyzed,the examples of dynamic disasters occurring in some metal mines in China are summarized,the occurrence mechanism,monitoring and early warning methods,and prevention and control techniques of these disasters are highlighted,and some new opinions,suggestions,and solutions are proposed simultaneously.Moreover,some shortcomings in current disaster research are pointed out,and the direction of efforts to improve the prevention and control level of dynamic disasters in China’s metal mines in the future is prospected.The integration of forward-looking key innovative theories and technologies in the abovementioned aspects will greatly enhance the cognitive level of disaster prevention and mitigation in China’s metal mining industry and achieve a significant shift from passive disaster relief to active disaster prevention.

Multidisciplinary design optimization on production scale of underground metal mine

In order to ensure overall optimization of the underground metal mine production scale, multidisciplinary design optimization model of production scale which covers the subsystem objective function of income of production, safety and environmental impact in the underground metal mine was established by using multidisciplinary design optimization method. The coupling effects from various disciplines were fully considered, and adaptive mutative scale chaos immunization optimization algorithm was adopted to solve multidisciplinary design optimization model of underground metal mine production scale. Practical results show that multidisciplinary design optimization on production scale of an underground lead and zinc mine reflect the actual operating conditions more realistically, the production scale is about 1.25 Mt/a (Lead and zinc metal content of 160 000 t/a), the economic life is approximately 14 a, corresponding coefficient of production profits can be increased to 15.13%, safety factor can be increased to 5.4% and environmental impact coefficient can be reduced by 9.52%.

Dynamic optimization of cutoff grade in underground metal mining

In order to maximize the overall economic gain from a metal mine operation, selection of cutoff grades must consider two important aspects: the time value of money and the spatial variation of the grade distribution in the deposit. That is, cutoff grade selection must be dynamic with respect to both time and space. A newly developed method that fulfills these requirements is presented. In this method, the deposit or a portion of it under study is divided into "decision units" based on the mining method and sample data. The statistical grade distribution and the grade-tonnage relationship of each decision unit are then computed based on the samples falling in the unit. Each decision unit with its grade-tonnage relationship is considered as a stage in a dynamic programming scheme and the problem is solved by applying a forward dynamic programming based algorithm with an objective function of maximizing the overall net present value (NPV). A software package is developed for the method and applied to an underground copper mine in Africa.