MINING ENGINEERING, MINE PLANNING, ROCK MECHANICS, NUMERICAL MODELLING

• BE specialises in mission critical engineering applied mechanics for the mining, civil and oil and gas industries.
• Our goal is to provide the most reliable, quantitative forecasts of geotechnical and hydrogeological outcomes possible given available data, and to continuously improve the science of design for extractive industries.We do this by developing and applying sophisticated tools to estimate geotechnical outcomes in terms that clients can understand, and integrate directly into their operations.
• Focusing on fundamental applied mechanics, we pioneered true mine-scale, deformation realistic non-linear Finite Element analysis. Our field verification processes enable us to provide the client with forecasts that can be directly compared to measurements in the field, and continuously improved upon using those measurements. The benefits of transparent, direct, same language comparison of modeled and measured data are great: Once geotechnical, planning, production and management teams are using the same language and are confident they understand the precision of their forecasts, better decision making and continuous design improvement come naturally.
• BE currently has offices in Australia in Sydney, Melbourne and Berlin, Germany. To find out more about our work, follow the links to your area of interest and please contact us for more information

SIMULATION AIDED MINING ENGINEERING : COLLABORATIVE MONITORING, MODELLING AND PLANNING

Open access to forecasts of mine performance by all members of the mine planning team, in the form of open databases of technical or financial simulation results has been considered risky in the past, with a concern that the results will not be understood or will be misused. However, some modeling techniques allow very high similitude forecasting of performance and the results can potentially be presented in a form that is unambiguous and which all engineers can be more easily trained to understand. With some effort, sufficient reliability and quantifications of error are possible to overcome many of the issues.

Allowing more members of the planning team to have direct access to forecasts of mine performance - across rock mechanics, economics, geology and production - will promote awareness of the issues across disciplines and will act as a mechanism for improving mine designs. The models will also be more easily integrated into quality assurance programs, by providing a framework for understanding measurement results.

The sufficiency requirements for undertaking Simulation Aided Mining Engineering will be presented, included some conclusions about requirements for training, quality standards and software development.

• Paper: Simulation Aided Mining Engineering: collaborative monitoring, modelling and planning
  

STRONG GROUND MOTION, HIGH SPECTRAL SIMILITUDE, 3D DYNAMIC SIMULATION

Beck Engineering simulates the cumulative effects of repeated loading by blasts, seismic events and earthquakes on stability, damage and deformation of built structures and excavations. We use 3d, strain softening geological models, incorporating built structures, ground reinforcement, and high resolution  geology models to simulate the effects of measured or synthetic strong ground motions.

We can simulate a range of impacts, blasts or earthquake scenarios to estimate the capacity of an excavation or foundations, or test alternative designs.

Our multi-scale, high resolution approach focuses on spectral similitude - matching the expected energy contained across a broad range of frequencies. Coupled with the best of discontinuum and continuum approaches this represents best feasible analysis for these class of problems. Too much analysis in this field focuses solely on PPV, or ignores the effects of discontinuities. Simplistic analysis produces the wrong results, and false security.

This specialisation requires significant computational resources, and to be sufficient demands the highest standards of problem appreciation, model development, validation and ongoing field measurement.

To discuss the dynamic capacity of your critical infrastructure, contact Dr Charles Lilley.

CAVE INITIATION, PROPAGATION AND SUBSIDENCE

Forecasting cave growth, subsidence or recovery requires a model that captures the equilibrium between the flowing muckpile and the discontinuous rock mass.

To better estimate the likely performance of caves, a tool that properly accounted for the physical coupling of the cave material to the un-caved rock mass and the draw schedule, driven by the known physics of both parts of the problem was needed. No such tool was available.
After analysing a number of alternatives, a coupled Discontinuum Finite Element (DFE) - Cellular Automata (LGCA, or Newtonian CA) scheme was developed by BE, making use of existing cave simulation tools provided by our cave flow simulation partners.

In this scheme, the CA part computes the particle movements within the cave and changes in airgap geometry, while the DFE part computes a new solution for stress, deformation, damage and fault movement. As a consequence of the draw and the solution for stress and strain in the rock mass, an unstable zone in the cave back develops at each coupling step and sloughs into the cave, at which point these elements become available to be drawn. The process is repeated following the draw schedule, and is able to simulate most cave propagation phenomena including stalling and chimneying.

The coupled DFE-LGCA simulation procedure enables rapid simulation of cave propagation, flow and induced deformation driven by the cave draw schedule with a level of reliability shown to exceed any other available tool in all comparative studies undertaken so far. The method can be calibrated directly using observations of cave back location, grade and recovery, seismicity, tunnel damage, tomography or ground movement.

The close match between results of coupled flow deformation analysis and field measurements suggests the technique is useful for forecasting of cave induced deformation, and is especially useful for simulating cave propagation and assessing risk related to the draw schedule.

BE believes that this technique represents best practice for cave simulation in the world today.

For more details please contact David Beck.

CASE STUDIES

		Mining and tunnelling in squeezing and high deformation conditions
		Homogenisation and discrete fracture networks Rock breakage and fragmentation
		3d large open pit modelling Coupled deformation and hydrology simulation for open oit mines
		Numerical Modelling of Squeezing Ground And High Deformation Mining Environments
		Mining induced seicmicity research

The use of large three-dimensional (3D) numerical models, sufficient scale and detail of geological units, structure and a realistic representation of the stress field allow simulation of realistic displacements and energy release for mining problems. When necessary, probabilistic techniques are applied to more reliably describe estimates of the possible range of outcomes.

Beck Engineering is the only Australian mining engineering consultancy with experience building, running and calibrating large, geometrically true, mine-scale 3d non-linear inelastic FE models.