Mining Institute, Perm Federal Research Center, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Perm, Russia:

I. A. Sanfirov, Director, Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences
A. I. Babkin, Divisional Manager, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, aib@mi-perm.ru
A. G. Yaroslavtsev, Divisional Manager, Candidate of Engineering Sciences
A. I. Nikiforova, Junior Researcher, Candidate of Engineering Sciences

Specific geological structure of shallow hard mineral bodies hinders direct application of the informative seismic exploration technology widely used in the oil industry. In connection with this, aiming at solving of different problems connected with underground mining of hard minerals, a package of shallow seismic technologies has been compiled and found the most extensive application at the Europe’s largest Upper Kama Potash Deposit. As per stages of mining, such types of seismic surveys as non-explosive high-resolution shallow seismic prospecting, underground seismics using the common-depth-point method, underground acoustic testing and borehole seismic acquisition are applied at the deposit. Additional improvement in precise positioning of discontinuities that complicate mining arises from joint interpretation of differently directed observations and wave fields of various frequency and level recorded in the framework of the unified full-scale technology. As a result, different-level modeling of real media is performed with the coordinated kinematic parameters of the models, including traveltimes and stacking velocities of target reflectors. The qualitative interpretations of seismic exploration data in the form of detailed geological models with the identified local discontinuities which complicate mining operations serve a parametric framework for geomechanical modeling. Such modeling at different stages of mining allows estimating induced impact on rock mass and making appropriate design choices in case of emergency. The information content provided by the seismic exploration package has been taken into account in mining at the Upper Kama Potash Deposit for more than thirty years.
The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Grant No. 16-17-00101.

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