Opinion on a Reliable Rock Engineering Tool-Box for Mining Industry

Abstract

Along the development of human being, there are several important inventions that completely change the way we live. Such inventions may be "fire", "electricity", and now "Information Technology -IT". It is difficult to imagine our life now without IT, and it is the same situation in mining industry. It is quite common today that rock engineering projects in general, and particularly mining projects are planned and developed with help of computer added tool-numerical model. The model can be performed in 2D or 3D in order to provide engineering parameters for decision making. The engineering parameters can be development and distribution of stress, strain, and displacement for stability analyses. It can also be vibration and seismicity related to mining process, and so on…. Information provided from numerical models is always an important source of information making decision. However, decision makers are always "stuck" with a question that "How can I trust the information from numerical model?" In our opinion, it is a long process with a more complete toolbox rather than only numerical model alone for appropriately to answer to that question. With over 50 years of research and development, SINTEF has developed a reliable rock engineering tool to deal with the challenges. The tool is a combination of three components "investigation tools", "numerical modelling", and "site monitoring". We use the term "TRIPOD" for the methodology.