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Underground stoping
This artcle provides insight into one of the upcoming Underground Engineering tools, MineSight Stope (MSStope).
Specifcally aimed at underground stope mining, the tool will handle tasks such as block economic value (BEV)
computaton, stope slicing, scheduling, and reserve reportng. MSStope will provide planners with a quick, easy-to-use
tool for preliminary stope design, conceptual level scheduling, and sensitvity analysis.
The primary input required by MSStope is the block model for the project in queston. Apart from the usual grade items
contained within, several new items need to be defned in order to store output generated by the MSStope computatons.
These include an item to denote diferent mining areas, a fag to denote which blocks are included in or excluded from
stoping, an item to store the BEV, and an item to record stope numbers that result from slicing the mining area.
Once these items have been defned and stored, we create a model view object for the block model, which can then be
loaded in MSStope, and each of the sectons within the tool can be confgured by setng up the parameters contained
within. The tool contains three main sectons Stope Boundary, Slicing, and Scheduling which we shall examine in
further detail.
1) Stope Boundary: This secton is used to add in block model items, defne minimum stope dimensions (in number of
blocks), and input economic parameters, which then allow MSStope to compute the fnal BEV for each block in the
model. Whether the block model is to be processed in its entrety or only in part can also be customized by defning
the area of interest. In its current state, MSStope utlizes the MVN (Maximum Value Neighborhood) algorithm to
search for the best possible combinaton of blocks that will yield maximum profts. Other algorithms are expected to
be made available with future releases of the tool.
Figure 1: Underground stope shape, showing crown pillars (blue), stopes (red), and ribs (orange).
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Figure 2: Block Model setup within MSStope.
Figure 3: Defning variable and constant economic parameters.
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2) Slicing: This secton contains setngs related to slicing the mining area into stopes, as well as generatng
reserve reports. If working with multple mining areas, each area may be sliced diferently to produce
multple regions or sub-levels, by specifying diferent dimensions, azimuths, and crown pillar heights for
each area. Once completed, reports on tons and grades for sliced stopes can be generated. The reportng
secton is similar to the ARC Reportng tools seen in other areas of MineSight, and allows for customized
report generaton with user-defned felds.
Figure 3: Reportng reserves from sliced stopes.
3) Scheduling: This secton is responsible for providing scheduling informaton for the stopes; i.e. the availability of
stopes during certain periods of tme, and the order in which they should be mined to maximize efciency and
maintain proftability. Four diferent scheduling approaches are available, and inputs relatng to tme periods, stope
development, material processing etc. need to be provided. Scheduling is performed by simulatng the mining process
day by day within each tme period for all the available stopes. As with reserves, customized scheduling reports can
then be generated.
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Figure 4: Scheduling reports provide informaton on which stopes should be mined during which periods.
Afer setng up and running MSStope, we can check the results of the computatons by querying blocks from the block
model and examining the new items defned at the start these will now be populated with values.
MSStope is gearing up to be a revolutonary additon to the Underground Engineering toolset in MineSight, and its
release as part of a future MineSight update will aford you great fexibility and control in the design and scheduling of
underground stope mining, at a conceptual level of detail.

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