The drive for mechanization of stoping operations on South African platinum, gold and chrome mines is favouring stope support by rock bolts rather than the traditional volumefilling support methods such as mine poles. Many of the stopes are less than two metres ...

The paper describes an R& D programme carried out on Cempak, a proposed stope support system for deep, tabular, hard rock gold and platinum mines; which looks in particular into the issue of convergence after attainment of peak load. Cempak fundamentally ...

The paper describes an R&D programme carried out on Filpak, a proposed means of gully support in stopes using backfill as local and regional support. Filpaks fundamentally comprise sheets of ductile welded steel mesh fixed in horizontal array at the ends ...

Labour-intensive narrow reef stoping, as traditionally practiced in South African gold and platinum mines, is almost unique in the modern first-world mechanised mining environment. Shortcomings of the system include the ever-increasing cost of labour, a cap ...

<p>A review of the most widely used global extraction sequences in sublevel is undertaken. The review includes techniques used to extract massive as well as single or multiple steeply dipping tabular orebodies. The paper also deals with thick flat lying orebodies ...

Stope design in Canadian hard rock mines is often carried out using the Stability Graph Method. However, this method does not account for the low confinement measured around stopes or quantify the amount of dilution associated with stope caving. A new approach ...