Escondida is a copper porphyry deposit located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, 170 km south-east of Antofagasta. In the last five years, SRK Chile has been involved in several tasks, including geotechnical characterisation, procedure updates, QA/QC of core logging data, structural model updates, geotechnical block models, and stability analysis through numerical modelling. SRK established how the clay content controls the rock mass strength and the stability behaviour in the pit. New technologies have been implemented in geotechnics, such as hyperspectral analysis, to correlate rock strength with mineral content.
By SRK Chile
