Beck, D., Beck Engineering
Sharrok, G., The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Capes, G., Newcrest Mining Limited, Orange, NSW, Australia

Coupled, granular flow-deformation simulations have been undertaken at a number of caving operations to simulate cave initiation, propagation and gravity flow. The tool combines a Newtonian Cellular Automata (NCA) representation of the cave
muckpile with an explicit Discontinuum Finite Element (DFE) model of the rock mass mine scale and incorporate high resolution input data such as large numbers of explicit structures in the rock mass and very numbers of small particles in the cave muckpile.

BE_PAPER_2011_COUPLED_SCHEME_FOR_SIMULATION_OF_CAVE_INITIATION_AND_GROWTH