Understanding and managing surface subsidence at New Gold's New Afton block cave operation

Davies, Andrew; Hamilton, Dave; Clayton, Margaret V.

doi:10.36487/acg_rep/1815_52_davies

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The primary goal of developing the comprehensive monitoring program at New Afton was to support investigation of factors controlling subsidence behaviour, development of a conceptual model of future behaviour, and prediction of future subsidence as described in the companion paper (Davies et al 2018). The phased approach that was taken resulted in a comprehensive instrumentation network that uses simple and inexpensive instruments to characterise large-scale subsidence behaviour, and more complex and expensive instruments to address specific monitoring needs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a monitoring network for surface subsidence at New Gold's New Afton block cave operation

Clayton¹,

Dugie²,

LeRiche³

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving

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New Gold's New Afton mine is a six million tonne per year operating mine located 8 km southwest of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. The current mining lift is approximately 600 m below ground, partially beneath the historical Afton pit. The subsidence zone at New Afton has developed asymmetrically and has deviated from the initial feasibility study modelling estimates. The growth of the subsidence zone extents is now being monitored in consideration of the mine's surface infrastructure. The subsidence monitoring system at New Afton has been developed in phases in response to project needs. Initially, monitoring was setup to track the predicted cave growth and surface deformation near the crater. The monitoring network was expanded to areas away from the crater using additional instruments of various types. An automated data collection and retrieval system was implemented, with existing electrical instruments retrofitted to collect and transmit data automatically to the mine's database. Drilling completed to install these instruments allowed collection of new subsurface information used to refine the geological model, thus improving the mine's understanding of subsidence progression. In addition to providing information necessary for day-to-day mine operations, data collected from this monitoring system allow for refinement of predictions of future subsidence. The different data types each come with limitations and interpretation challenges. This paper discusses the development of the monitoring network, along with instrument selection criteria and performance information for New Afton.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a monitoring network for surface subsidence at New Gold's New Afton block cave operation

Clayton¹,

Dugie²,

LeRiche³

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving

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“…The majority of the deposit occurs within crystalline and polylithic fragmental volcanics belonging to the Triassic Nicola Group and lesser monolithic intrusive breccias consolidated into a single-host package, which is informally referred to as BXF (Davies 2015). A plan view of geological and structural features at the extraction level is shown in Figure 1.…”

Section: New Afton Block Cave Operationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cave fragmentation in a cave-to-mill context at the New Afton Mine part I: fragmentation and hang-up frequency prediction

Nadolski

Munkhchuluun

Klein

et al. 2018

Mining Technology: Transactions of the Institutions of Mining a

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Block and panel caving methods are increasingly being proposed as an economical means for the excavation of ore deposits. The development of methods for predicting cave fragment size holds significant potential for reducing risk associated with cave mining projects. A fragmentation study was carried out for the New Afton B1 and B2 caves to generate fragmentation models that could be applied to future lifts. In part 1 of this paper, implications of fragmentation size for the mine are considered, whereas the effects on mill performance are addressed in part 2. Fragmentation measurements, from sieving and image-based methods, as well as historical logs of hang-up events are presented. Measurements showed that for the B1 and B2 caves, secondary fragmentation size, representing the size of material at drawpoints, is strongly related to faulting, height of draw and effects of the cave boundary.

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“…Cumulative vertical deformations observed outside the structure (towards the New Afton TSF) between September 2016 and March 2022 remained below the experiential detection limit (approximately 0.7 m), while those observed within the structure range from approximately 10 to 35 m. The progression of the subsiding ground surface within the structure follows a 'stepped' profile with both vertical and horizontal components of movement; downwards and towards the Lift 1 footprint, as shown in Figure14. This behaviour suggests a toppling kinematic mode along sequential steeply dipping structures subparallel to the orebody within the Nicola Group bedrock unit, with the movements in the overlying till and waste rock units responding to this mechanism(Davies et al 2018;Kamp et al 2020). The magnitude of the horizontal component of movement is likely influenced by the south pit slope deformations (discussed further in Section 5.3).…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Observed subsidence progression at New Afton Mine in response to Lift 1 mining

Davenport¹,

Kamp²

2022

Caving 2022: Fifth International Conference on Block and Sublevel Caving

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Understanding and managing surface subsidence at New Gold's New Afton block cave operation

Abstract: New Gold's New Afton Mine is a 6 million tonne per year operating mine located 8 km outside of Kamloops,

Cited by 5 publications

References 5 publications

Development of a monitoring network for surface subsidence at New Gold's New Afton block cave operation

Development of a monitoring network for surface subsidence at New Gold's New Afton block cave operation

Cave fragmentation in a cave-to-mill context at the New Afton Mine part I: fragmentation and hang-up frequency prediction

Observed subsidence progression at New Afton Mine in response to Lift 1 mining

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