Stability Risk and Economic Analysis of Steepened East Wall of Huni Pit- A case study

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_63How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Steepening; Stability; Huni Pit

Abstract

The high cost of mining is driving mine owners and designers to reduce cost by optimizing (steepening) open pit slope design parameters. Meanwhile, the catastrophic consequences of slope failures have the tendencies to negate the gains made from the steepening process if due processes are not followed. To access more ore at the base of the current Huni Pit, the bench face angle for the current east wall, was steepened from 65⁰ to 75⁰. Steepening was the only geotechnical option available to optimise the design because of con-straints posed by the location of east tailings storage facilities and the booster stations on the eastern corridor of the Huni Pit.

A geotechnical risk assessment was conducted using a quantitative risk as-assessment to identify risks on the overall slope of the east wall after the slope was modelled. Kinematic analysis was conducted using the dips software from Rocscience™ on the east wall to determine if the potential for structurally controlled bench scale failures existed. The availability of 3D limit equilibrium tools from Rocscience™, made it easy to appropriately perform further stability analysis by undertaking a probabilistic analysis.

Afterwards, an economic evaluation was conducted to select the design options that brought economic benefits to the mine.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Mustapha Seidu
AU  - Peter Andrews
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/07
TI  - Stability Risk and Economic Analysis of Steepened East Wall of Huni Pit- A case study
BT  - Proceedings of the Rocscience International Conference 2025 (RIC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 632
EP  - 641
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_63
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_63
ID  - Seidu2025
ER  -