Rock Engineering 2017

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter SRK Chile’s Rock Mechanics team completed a study of the slope design at Cuajone pit. The Cuajone porphyry copper deposit is located on the western slopes of Cordillera Occidental, in the southern Andes of Peru. The...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter Since 2012, SRK has been working with a major North American producer of agricultural nutrients that owns and operates production facilities in Canada and the United States. SRK has been helping the company’s Mine Engineering department...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter One of the major difficulties encountered by geotechnical engineers is dealing with the uncertainty present in every aspect of the slope design process. Uncertainty is associated with natural variation of properties, and the imprecision and unpredictability...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter Effective bench-berm management is critical for safety at operating open pit mines. SRK Vancouver’s Geotechnical Group developed a simple and practical 3D modelling tool that can be used to quickly assess the stability of bench scale...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter The Fruta del Norte project is an undeveloped, underground high-grade gold epithermal deposit in the southeast of Ecuador. The deposit will be accessed via twin declines, and ore will be recovered using a combination of transverse...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter All mining excavations should have an appropriate geotechnical design that takes into account the rock mass structure. The level of geotechnical investigation and design required will be governed by the geological and geotechnical complexity of the...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter Orosur Mining operates the San Gregorio Gold Mine in northern Uruguay. The 300m deep open pit, flooded for eleven years, was dewatered in 2015 to carry out underground mining. The exposed pit walls showed a large...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter SRK has been working for Sierra Metals at the Yauricocha Mine in Peru to help improve ground conditions that have historically resulted in mud rushes. The work has employed risk assessment tools to reduce the risk...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter Modern photogrammetry surveys can produce highly detailed 3D models of a rock slope. Using a high end DSLR camera with a long focal length telephoto lens, we can construct a model of an open pit slope...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter The SRK Vancouver Rock Mechanics team has been working at Cameco’s underground Cigar Lake Uranium Mine providing advanced multidisciplinary geotechnical modelling since the summer of 2015. SRK conducted geotechnical and structural geology reviews, which led to...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter Over the years, four programs of rock stress measurement and interpretation have been completed at the Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea, each providing different interpretations of the in situ field stresses. Measurements were taken...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter Geotechnical studies in mining operations rely on the ability of geologists to use measurements and observations from drilled or exposed rock to predict lithology and structural weaknesses in areas that may impact the stability of the...

SRK News | Issue 54 : Rock Engineering and Slope Stability A4 | Letter The requirement to optimise excavation design and minimise waste stripping is becoming more critical in pit engineering as pits deepen and economics become tighter. Representative structural data is critical when optimising pit slope angles and in...