Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming

The transition from open pit (OP) to underground (UG) is one of the challenging mining engineering issues. The mines which have the potential to make transition from OP mining to UG mining will eventually come to a point introduced as a ‘Transition Point’ where it needs to determine whether to exten...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chung, J., Topal, E., Ghosh, Apurna
Format: Journal Article
Published: Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 2016
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/14211
_version_ 1848748561571774464
author Chung, J.
Topal, E.
Ghosh, Apurna
author_facet Chung, J.
Topal, E.
Ghosh, Apurna
author_sort Chung, J.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description The transition from open pit (OP) to underground (UG) is one of the challenging mining engineering issues. The mines which have the potential to make transition from OP mining to UG mining will eventually come to a point introduced as a ‘Transition Point’ where it needs to determine whether to extend the pit or switch to UG mining. This research proposes a new integer programming (IP) formulation to obtain the optimal transition point from OP to UG mining. The proposed model has been implemented on a three-dimensional (3-D) gold deposit and a two-dimensional (2-D) case study has been used to demonstrate the validity of the model. Due to the large number of variables, strategies have been proposed to shorten the solution time. The proposed model has successfully determined the optimal transition point and generated significantly better undiscounted profit than that of the traditional approach.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T07:07:00Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-14211
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T07:07:00Z
publishDate 2016
publisher Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-142112017-09-13T15:58:10Z Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming Chung, J. Topal, E. Ghosh, Apurna The transition from open pit (OP) to underground (UG) is one of the challenging mining engineering issues. The mines which have the potential to make transition from OP mining to UG mining will eventually come to a point introduced as a ‘Transition Point’ where it needs to determine whether to extend the pit or switch to UG mining. This research proposes a new integer programming (IP) formulation to obtain the optimal transition point from OP to UG mining. The proposed model has been implemented on a three-dimensional (3-D) gold deposit and a two-dimensional (2-D) case study has been used to demonstrate the validity of the model. Due to the large number of variables, strategies have been proposed to shorten the solution time. The proposed model has successfully determined the optimal transition point and generated significantly better undiscounted profit than that of the traditional approach. 2016 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/14211 10.17159/2411-9717/2016/v116n8a13 Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy fulltext
spellingShingle Chung, J.
Topal, E.
Ghosh, Apurna
Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming
title Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming
title_full Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming
title_fullStr Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming
title_full_unstemmed Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming
title_short Where to Make the Transition from Open-pit to Underground?: Using Integer Programming
title_sort where to make the transition from open-pit to underground?: using integer programming
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/14211