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Mining

In: Computers and Technology

Submitted By kiddiecool
Words 688
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Surface mining involves the basic procedures of topsoil removal, drilling and blasting, ore and waste loading, hauling and dumping and various other auxiliary operations. Loading of ore and waste is carried out simultaneously at several different locations in the pit and often in several different pits. Shovels and frond-end loaders of various sizes are used to load material onto trucks. Hauling material from the shovel production faces to the dumping sites must be accomplished through a network of haul roads of various length and grades. Haul roads can be extremely complex, cover large surface areas and pass through extreme elevation changes. Loading times of shovels depends on shovel capacity, digging conditions, and the truck capacity. Queues often will form at the shovels since trucks of various sizes may be used at individual shovels. Thus, allocation of trucks to haul specific material from a specific pit or shovel becomes a complex problem. Obviously, efficient mining operations are strongly dependent on proper allocation of trucks to shovels and the respective allocation of trucks along the appropriate haul roads and dump sites. The number and type of trucks and shovels are two important factors in determining the optimum design parameters of an open-pit mining system. Also, the characteristics of truck’s arrival and loading times at shovels determine the performance measures (i.e. total production) of truck-shovel system. The assumptions of identical truck travel and loading times may result in underestimating or overestimating the performance of these systems.
This strategy has been proven to be the most inefficient. This is mainly due to the fact that the equipment does not operate at constant rate. The reason for this is due to the variation of event times, along with the interactions between trucks at the road intersection points. Furthermore, both

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