Integration of geotechnical databases for rock mass characterisation in underground mines

Abstract

Rock mass characterisation is a fundamental aspect of a mine design and operation. Every piece of information should be considered in a geotechnical model to understand an orebody's geological structure, strength and stress conditions. In this paper, the statistical integration of several geotechnical databases has been achieved through a novel platform called Integrated Geotechnical Data (IGD). The IGD has been particularly useful in statistically analysing drillcore logged data, which is a commonly available source of information from a mine site. A total of four mine sites, each extracted with a different mining method, were analysed. In each case, large databases of core disking and RQD have been studied and used to validate results from a number of stress measurement techniques, as well as seismicity.