Numerical Simulation of Independent Advance of Ore Breaking in the Non-pillar Sublevel Caving Method

The mechanism of stress generation and propagation by detonation loading in five separate independent advance of ore breaking patterns is discussed in the paper. An elastic numerical model was developed using ANSYS/LS-DYNA 3D Nonlinear Dynamic Finite Element Software. In this package ANSYS is the preprocessor and LS-DYNA is the postprocessor. Numerical models in the paper to actual were 1:10 and the element mesh was dissected in scanning mode utilizing the symmetry characteristics of the numerical model. Five different advance rates were studied. Parameters, such as the time required to maximum stress, the action time of the available stress, the maximum velocity of the nodes, the stress penetration time, the magnitude of the stress peak and the time duration for high stress were numerically simulated. The 2.2 m advance appeared optimum from an analysis of the simulation results. The results from numerical simulation have been validated by tests with physical models.