Designing a rockfall testing program for open-pit mines to investigate runout and bench catchment.

Details

• Personal Author:
  Bourgeois J ; Warren S
• Description:
  The potential of rockfall at open-pit mines presents a continuous hazard to mine workers and is typically mitigated by designing catch benches at empirically determined widths. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is working in conjunction with industry and academia to revisit and update current catch bench guidelines to better match acceptable risk tolerances for modern mining practices. To begin this process, a rockfall testing program was designed to gather empirical runout and bench catchment data at partnering mine sites in the Western United States. This paper presents a detailed description of each component of the rockfall testing program, including scouting and safety plan development, equipment requirements, synthetic rock development for uniform testing across varying bench configurations, local rock collection for testing of mine-specific geology, data acquisition during testing, and data processing. Additionally, this paper describes how the program has been updated over time according to lessons learned during initial rockfall testing. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Mining Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Mining industry; Geotechnical engineering; Rock mechanics; Rock falls; Open pit mining
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• Publisher:
  Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME)
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 10 ; Washington
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  SMRD - Spokane Mining Research Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-8
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20069463
• Citation:
  MineXchange: 2024 SME Annual Conference & Expo, February 25-28, 2024, Phoenix, Arizona, preprint 24-024. Englewood, CO: Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, 2024 Feb; :1-8
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2024
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  MineXchange: 2024 SME Annual Conference & Expo, February 25-28, 2024, Phoenix, Arizona, preprint 24-024
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:7dc847c09aedf140bc731323e8446b4703641ae07d6ad9e7b7238120dab30b8f7dcaa9b938d34d035f87873a0fe7fec262d5d13dcaf290925445e82b6de3b57d
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/247118/cdc_247118_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 168.02 KB ]