Melnikov Institute of Integrated Mineral Resources Development – IPKON, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia:

K. N. Trubetskoy, Chief Researcher, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Yu. P. Galchenko, Leading Researcher, Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, schtrek33@mail.ru

Albazino Resources LTD, Amursk, Russia:
A. S. Shuklin, Mining Engineer

Flat and inclined ore lodes are the most difficult geological objects of integrated mining, and it is of the highest concern to find new ways of geotechnological development towards the enhanced safety, production output, completeness and quality of extraction of geological reserves in such lodes. In this case, the new capacities and prospects open due to the transformation of the main flat lode mining principles to the technology for steeply occurring lodes of complex morphology, when the direction of the mining front is determined by the anisotropy of the complex structure modulus with respect to the basic elements of occurrence. For this reason, in flat lode mining along the strike, it is expedient to drill blast holes in the direction of the minimal intricacy of form of the lode, and drilling tunnels should be driven in the direction of the maximum intricacy of the lode form. The application of this methodical provision allows shaping a schematic process flow sheet for lode mining advancing along the strike, with ore blasting by holes drilled from sublevel drilling tunnels, which enables synchronization of basic operations of a stoping cycle due to their spatial separation. An ore bulk is the main structural element of the proposed geotechnology. The idea is that the purposeful change of the energy content of each new layer mining enables throwing broken ore for a decreasing distance and forming thereby a varied width bulk of ore approaching fi nally the production face. In this technology for each new layer to be blasted, the burden should be changed in proportion to the reduction in the length of throw during blasting. The performance of the proposed geotechnology is determined for the conditions of Lysogorsky gold deposit. A test extraction block is divided into 20 sections having the total length of 54.5 m along the strike, with the height of 38 m in the upper sublevel and 49.6 m in the lower sublevel, i.e. there are 10 sections in each extraction panel. With the proposed geotechnology applied, the main technical and economical indices of stoping jump high, while the safety of mining is enhanced due to withdrawal of personnel from the production area.
This study has been supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Grant No. 14-37-00050.

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