Course – 1 by Singgih Saptono

UNDERGROUND
MINING METHODS
DEFINITION OF TERMS
Adit Grizzly Slot Skip
Back Hanging Wall Stope Cage
Chute Level Strike Sump
Cone Manway Sublevel Drift footwall
Crosscut Ore Wall Rock Vein
Dip Ore Pass Waste Ore bin
Drawpoint Prospect Winze
Drift Raise Foot wall
Finger Raise Ramp Tunnel
Footwall Shaft Pillar
MINING METHODS
• Room-and-Pillar Mining (Classic room-and-pillar mining, Post room-and-pillar mining,
Step room-and-pillar mining)
• Vein Mining (Mining a narrow vein with steep dip, Small size drill jumbo, Dome mine,
Canada, Mini-rig for longhole drilling, Stillwater platinum mine, Montana, USA)
• Shrinkage Stoping (Shrinkage stoping with cross-cut loading)
• Sublevel Open Stoping
• Bighole Stoping
• Vertical Crater Retreat
• Cut-and-Fill Stoping
• Longwall Mining
• Sublevel Caving
• Block Caving
MECHANIZATION AND EFFICIENCY
• Preparing for the Future
• Mechanization-Automation-Robotics
• Quality and Grade Control
• Efficiency Ratings
• Utilization and Output
UNDERGROUND
MINING METHODS
Underground mines are used for
accessing and exploiting ore bodies that
are generally not exposed on surface
and due to technical or economic
reasons cannot be mined by open pit
methods. The infrastructure of
underground mines is more complex
than that of the open pits.
 A typical
layout of an
underground
mine
The main elements of the underground infrastructure are shown on
the Figure
• Drive or drift is a horizontal or nearly horizontal underground opening developed on the underground levels
along the strike of ore body. The drives are subdivided into hanging wall (located at the upper ore-waste
contact, ‘hanging’ above the ore body) and footwall (located at the lower ore-waste contact, at the ‘foot’ of
the ore body) drives. A footwall drive is also commonly called an ore drive.
• A crosscut is a horizontal underground tunnel intersecting the ore body across its strike. The crosscuts are
usually developed to connect the drives with the area in which stoping occurs.
• A raise is underground opening driven upward.
• A stope is an underground excavation made by removing ore from the host rocks. Development of stopes
often starts from blasting a slot, which is a steeply dipping to vertical excavation at one boundary of the
ore body. Mining then continues by blasting rings or slides of the orebody into the slot.
• A pillar is block of ore or barren rock left intact in the mined-out stope or between two stopes to act as a
mean of support. It required to provide structural integrity to the stoping process and prevent the stope
walls from collapsing. Pillars may be removed after stopes are mined out, but some pillars may be left in
place permanently.
• A draw point is a place from which the ore is extracted from the stope and loaded onto trucks or conveyors
for further transportation.
• An ore pass is a steeply dipping underground opening for passing ore from one level to another under
gravity. The ore is loaded through the chutes, which are the loading arrangements that utilise gravity.
Important element of the ore loading and transportation system is a coarse steel grating, called a grizzly,
for screening out oversize rock fragments.
• A winze is a small vertical excavation which can be developed in underground mines by driving it
downward from one level to another, or it can be driven from a surface to a level.
Examples of the
underground
machineries and
equipment: (a) two
beams Jumbo; (b) air
leg; (c) LHD truck; (d)
underground working
supported by meshing
and rock bolting (RB)
UNDERGROUND MINING METHODS
• Selective mining methods
• Bulk Mining Methods
• Mining of the Gently Dipping Ore Bodies
• Unconventional Mining
Selective mining methods

• Narrow steeply dipping veins

Cut-and-
Shrinkage
Fill
Stoping
Method
Bulk Mining Methods
• Where the ore body is large, massive and
has regular shape, selective mining is not
necessary nor desirable from a cost
perspective. The ore body can be
efficiently mined in large volumes and
with higher productivity using larger
underground equipment and the bulk
mining methods. There are several
methods for bulk underground mining, the
most common being block caving, long
hole open stoping, sublevel open stoping,
sublevel caving and vertical-crater-
retreat.
Bulk Mining
Methods
• Block Caving
• Sublevel Open
Stoping
• Sublevel Caving
• Vertical Crater
Retreat
 • The methods which were described above
are designed for steeply dipping ore
bodies. Mining of the horizontal and gently
Mining of the dipping ore bodies require different
approach, which includes continues
Gently support for the large overhead surfaces
Dipping Ore exposed during mining of the flat stopes.
The different methods are available for
Bodies mining of the flat-bedded deposits. Two of
them, room-and pillar and longwall
mining, are described in the section
below.
 Mining of the Gently
Dipping Ore Bodies

Room-and-pillar methods, generalised after Hamrin (1982, 2001)

• Room-and-pillar Method
• Longwall Mining

Longwall mining, generalised after Hamrin (1982, 2001): (a) plan showing
general layout of the longwall stope; (b) gold reef mined by longwall method
in South Africa
 • In situ Leach (ISL) Technique
Unconventional Mining • Dredging of the Mineral Sands

In situ leach uranium mining: (a) principles of the technique; (b) production field at the
Budenovskoe mine, Kazakhstan
Thank You