Advances in Mining Simulation

Mine scale finite element simulations are now a key design and planning tool for some of the
world’s largest and most challenging open pit and deep underground mining projects. Models
with more than ten million degrees of freedom are regularly used for forecasting and probabilistic analysis of Life-of-Mine scenarios. These simulations, sometimes analysing decades of the extraction and continuing deformation of complex infrastructure, are run in less than a day on the Abaqus/Explicit parallel solver using 32 CPUs. The speed and benefits of high-similitude analysis has allowed Abaqus simulation to become more commonplace, and in some cases to be considered a requirement for sufficient analysis of high-value mine developments. The next phase of improved simulation for mines will involve the incorporation of more detail and a more accurate representation of the governing physics of continuum-discontinuum problems, to attain improved similitude at all length scales. Two areas where significant improvements are expected in the very short term are in the simulation of the loads in masses of granular materials and in the behavior of elementary volumes of fractured rock.