Determination and stability analysis of ultimate open-pit slope under geomechanical uncertainty

In open-pit mines, pit slope as one of the important parameters affects the mine economy and total minable reserve, and it is also affected by different uncertainties which arising from many sources. One of the most critical sources of uncertainty effects on the pit slope design is rock mass geomechanical properties. By comparing the probability of failure resulted from deterministic procedure and probabilistic one, this paper investigated the effects of aforesaid uncertainties on open-pit slope stability in metal mines. In this way, to reduce the effect of variance, it implemented Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) technique. Furthermore, a hypothesis test was exerted to compare the effects on two cases in Middle East. Subsequently, the investigation approved high influence of geomechanical uncertainties on overall pit steepness and stability in both iron and copper mines, though on the first case the effects were just over.