A successful sublevel caving operation requires that the rockmass surrounding the orebody continually fails and moves into the void created by ore extraction. This thesis attempts to develop a method for predicting the nature of this process at the Perseverance sublevel cave, Western Australia. Advanced knowledge of the deformations associated with the failure will permit timely planning for the replacement or rehabilitation of threatened mine infrastructure.; Research has been limited to the following tasks; a review of existing research in the field; reconstruction of the mining history and related caving failure at Perseverance; design and installation of a rockmass monitoring system; analysis of the monitoring results; characterisation of the rockmass based on a review of geological and geotechnical data and finally 3-Dimensional numerical modelling.
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