Carlson User Training Conference 2009

Carlson Surface Mining: Surface Pit Design and Range Diagrams

Grant Wenker, PE Mining Sales and Support gwenker@carlsonsw.com April 07, 01:00 2:45 p.m. This class takes the Design Bench Pit sequence further with 3D visualization. Spoil and fill design placement, and 3D pits with ramps will be covered. Dragline cuts and haul roads will be reviewed. 3D surface mine design with interactive surface history simulations are demonstrated. Cross sectional design with range diagrams are converted to 3D to make a spoiled surface for reclamation PMT design. Simple ramps and roads are built with Design Pad Template utilities.

Grant Wenker joined Carlson Software in March, 1998. Grant has a M.S. from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and a B.S. from the University of North Dakota. He is a registered mining engineer. Prior to joining Carlson Software, Grant worked on abandoned mine reclamation in the Black Hills of SD, in seismic exploration for hydrocarbons on the North Slope of Alaska, and as a consulting engineer at various PRB mines in Wyoming.

Carlson Surface Mining: Surface Pit Design and Range Diagrams

View 3D Surface History This command allows you to playback the grid sequence history generated by Design Bench Pit. You can add more grids, modify grid colors or change the grids order. When editing is complete, pick the OK button which brings up the playback 3D viewer window. There is a row of buttons allowing user to move from step to step in a grid sequence. On each step the grid displayed has elevations of the grid assigned for that step and the color of the last grid when the elevation at a particular location changed. For example the unaffected regions will have the color assigned to surface grid.

Surface History Grids

View 3D Surface History Fill Cut Design This command is used for both cut and fill. It contains 3 main dialogs. The first window contains the settings, the second defines the perimeter and the third defines the

benches and slopes. In this example, enter in one bench template as shown and apply it to all sides. The result is a 3D pit as seen in the next image.

Define Fill/Cut Design Main Screen

Select Boundary and Starting Elevations

Basic Pit Settings

Views of the Pit Now the same pit with the Road On option selected creates the following pit with the ramp.

Road On

Pit with Ramp Design Spoil Pile This command takes a 3D polyline outline of the top of a spoil pile and adjusts this polyline by either changing the elevation or extending a side to reach a specified volume for the pile. If the polyline isnt 3D, then it will prompt for the top of pile elevation. The resulting pile is drawn as 3D polylines showing the side slopes and where the pile ties into the existing surface. Before starting this command, you need to draw a closed polyline that represents the top of the pile. The fill slopes will start at this polyline and will run out and down until the slopes intersect the surface model. In the dialog box, you can choose between Extend Bench and Adjust Elevation. The extend bench option will prompt for a side of the pile to offset. Holding all the other sides with their elevations, the program will offset the selected side until the target volume is reached. For the adjust elevation, the entire pile polyline is moved up or down to obtain the target volume.

Spoil Design Parameters

Volume Report

This method used a 100,000 target, 1:1 slopes and a top of pile at 19.91. The resulting pile is below. The other option would keep the top at the starting elevation and move a polyline segment in or out to get to the targeted volume.

Views of the final backfill pile Design Pad Template for Ramp Design Design Pad Template has many uses, but this example uses an open 3D polyline and the template TPL file of the ramp. These two items, plus a surface file or screen entities to intersect, are all that is needed. The template is defined in the Civil module under Roads. Here is a simple template example to use.

Ramp Template in Design Template The 3D polyline is created by 3D Polyline by Slope on Surface. The low spot is selected and it was told to go up, to the right at a 12 percent. This will be the centerline of the ramp. Use the following settings as shown in the dialog box.

Design Pad Settings

Views of the finished Ramp Range Diagrams Draw Dragline Limits This command draws an outline in profile view of the dragline reach, depth and height limits. The program draws the limits of the dragline as polylines in the current layer. These limit polylines serve a guides in other dragline commands like Cut & Place. Also these dragline commands will check the dragline limits and report if the dragline limits are exceeded when processing the sequence file. The dragline parameters are set in the Define Dragline Equipment command. Before starting this command, the dragline should be defined in Define Dragline Equipment and the surface where the dragline sits should be drawn as a polyline in profile view. This polyline can be drawn with the Draw Fence Diagram command or the profile commands in the Civil Design module.

Draw Dragline Limits Cut and Place This command removes a cut area in cross-section view from a surface polyline and places a spoil pile of this area. Before starting this command, the surface should be drawn as a polyline from left to right. One way to draw the polylines is to use the Fence Diagram routine. In Fence Diagram use the option to draw the polylines as single polylines instead of closed polylines (with no hatching). Also, if there is an existing pit, turn on Draw Surface Polyline to make sure the surface line extends across the pit floor. The Draw Dragline Limits command can optionally be run before Cut & Place to draw an outline of the maximum reach, height and depth of the dragline.

Dig and Spoil placement Cut Only (Coal Removal) This command is similar to Cut & Place. Cut Only removes a cut area in cross-section view from a surface polyline. The difference with Cut & Place is that this command does not place the cut area as a spoil pile. The cut area is just removed from the surface polyline for operations like remove coal. Try to stay away from a 90 degree face on the coal, AutoCAD doesn't like vertical faces (89 is entered below). The same prompting and snap dialogs appear here as in the Cut and Place command.

Cut out the first coal Polyline to Centerline File This step is necessary to align the fence diagram back to plan view when it converts it to 3D with the Process Dragline Sequence. This example uses the perpendicular line drawn at the beginning of the fence diagram. Process Dragline Sequence This command applies 2D cross-section dragline steps along a centerline to create a 3D model. The dragline steps are stored in a sequence file (.SEQ file) that can be created by the Cut & Place, Cut Only, Dozer Push, Flatten Spoil Top and Blast Cast commands. There are two different methods for Process Dragline Sequence. The Multiple Along Centerline method applies the dragline sequence along a centerline for a range of stations. The centerline defines the dragline alignment and the mining surfaces are defined by grid files and/or section files. This method outputs section files, 3D polylines and a volume report. The Single Section Polyline method applies the dragline sequence to one station in cross section view. The dragline position is defined by picking the centerline position in section view and entering the elevation at this point. The mining surfaces are defined by picking polylines for the ground surface and strata in section view. The output is drawn as polylines in section view for this one station.

Each of the steps has a centerline reference point and the control points for the step are relative to this reference point. For example, the top of the spoil pile for Cut & Place could be 75 feet right of the centerline. Process Dragline Sequence runs the steps along the centerline. A centerline file (.CL file) can be created from a polyline with the Polyline to Centerline command. The existing ground can be modeled by either a grid file (.GRD file) or section file (.SCT file). Process Dragline Sequence works by repeating the 2D cross-section steps for each section along the centerline. When using a grid file surface, the program will prompt for a station interval and will create ground cross-sections at the specified offset left and right of the centerline at this interval before applying the dragline steps. When using a section file surface, the program will apply the dragline steps at the interval of the section file. There is an option to output the results of dragline steps to a section file. Besides outputting the final section results, sections at the end of each step can be saved to section files. The section files of each step are named automatically by adding the step sequence number to the original final section name. The dragline steps have an option to use a strata polyline which makes the control points relative to the strata. If strata polylines are used, then the Process Dragline will prompt for a grid file that models the strata. For example, you could use a use a top of coal polyline in the Cut & Place command to define the bottom of the cut area. With the store sequence file (.SEQ) option on, the program will prompt for a name for the polyline and you could enter "coal". This name is stored in the sequence file and when Process Dragline Sequence in run, the program will prompt for you to select the "coal" grid file. The program creates a report of the volumes for each step in the sequence. The Coal Density field in the dialog is used for calculating the coal tons for the report. The Taper Spoil Sides option adds stations before the first cut and after the last cut to show the repose angle of the ends of the fill spoil piles. There are options to draw 3D polylines of the pits. Draw Pit Polylines creates 3D polylines parallel to the centerline along the dragline control points such as the top of the spoil pile. Draw Cross Section Polylines creates 3D polylines perpendicular to the centerline for each cross section.

Process Dragline Sequence to 3D