Geotechnical strategy and tactics at Anglo Platinum's PPRust open pit operation, Limpopo Province, South Africa

摘要

Over the last four years Potgietersrust Platinums (PPRust) has successfullyudimplemented new geotechnical strategy and tactics to reduce risk, improving safety butudalso maximising profitability. A large database of core logging, face mapping and rockudtesting has been assembled and used in the slope design process. The data has also beenudused for optimising blast designs on a daily basis through the use of a geotechnicaludblock model. This greatly improves blast fragmentation and therefore loading andudmilling efficiencies. Slope management includes a limit blasting programme, dailyudvisual inspections, and state-of-the-art slope monitoring equipment, namelyudGroundProbe radar, Riegl lasers and GeoMoS automated prism monitoring. Slopeudoptimisation incorporates all the field data, operational controls, cost of failure, fulludeconomic analysis of various slope angles and fault tree analysis. Savings on wasteudstripping of hundreds of millions of Rands were gained from the optimisation as slopeudangles could be increased due to improved geotechnical knowledge and management.udPPRust’s geotechnical work is considered the benchmark for Anglo American open pitudoperations.