Detection of mining-induced fractures associated with stress perturbation around a stope at the Cooke 4 gold mine, South Africa, by using AE events

摘要

We applied advanced mapping techniques to more than 290,000 acoustic emission (AE) eventsrnrecorded by a monitoring network around a stope in the Cooke 4 shaft pillsr in South Africarn(previously known as Ezulwini gold mine) during mining in July–September 2011. We first appliedrnthe joint hypocenter determination (JHD) method to compensate for systematic recording stationrnerrors. Next, we applied the collapsing method to the output of the JHD method, which revealedrnsteeply dipping planar seismic structures with dip dimensions of 9.5–23 m. The results of our studyrndemonstrate that advanced AE mapping techniques can be used to delineate the fracture zones thatrndevelop in rock masses ahead of the mining face during mining.