Andre Van As

Editor’s note: The Geology and Mining series, edited by Dan Wood and Jeffrey Hedenquist, is designed to introduce early-career professionals and students to a variety of topics in mineral exploration, development, and mining, in order to provide insight into the many ways in which geoscientists contribute to the mineral industry. Abstract The rock...

Changing stress conditions are well known to cause rupturing of rock. This is well constrained on a small scale from laboratory experiments and inferred on a much larger scale from tectonic earthquakes. Here, we present a study of rock fracturing induced by changes in stress state during block-caving operations in an Australian mine. This intermedi...

Over the past decade mining companies have adopted aggressive mining strategies when designing their new block cave mines, ultimately driven by NPV. Block heights have typically doubled or even quadrupled compared to those of the past and similarly drawpoint spacings have increased by up to 30%. The poor track record experienced from several of the...

A field experiment was carried out to measure hydraulic fracture growth in naturally fractured rock. Hydraulic fracture interactions with pre-existing natural fractures, shear zones, veins, and adjacent hydraulic fractures were measured and mapped during the project. Tiltmeter and microseismic arrays were installed to test the performance of these...

The increasing move to block cave mining methods (including sublevel and panel caving) to access deeper and lower grade ore deposits as near surface sources become exhausted raises questions as to the extent and magnitudes of caving-induced subsidence as it may affect strain-sensitive infrastructure on surface. Predicting these surface deformations...

The Northparkes, Endeavour 26 orebody is a porphyry copper-gold deposit and comprises a moderately to well jointed rock mass characterised by gypsum veining, the intensity of which decreases with depth. The top 480 metres of the orebody is currently being mined by block caving, the undercut dimensions measuring 196 metres in length by 180 metres in...