: The present paper describes the design of a de-stress slot at the Golden Giant Mine in Ontario. It looks at the different constraints that limit the range of numerical modelling tools applicable to this mine design problem. A new boundary element formulation, the node-centric technique, developed recently, was found to be ideal for the problem. This new technique substantially reduces the number of unknowns in the fictitious stress method (FSM) and the displacement discontinuity method (DDM), by sharing nodal unknowns between adjacent elements. The combination of FSM and DDM optimizes the manner in which tabular geometries, and more regularly shaped objects, are modelled in a boundary element analysis. It solved models of the mine 10 - 20 times faster than existing geomechanics boundary element codes.
1 INTRODUCTION
This paper describes the design of a de-stress slot for Newmont ’s Golden Giant Mine in Ontario, Canada, using a numerical modelling tool currently under commercial development. The purpose of the destress slot was to protect the mine ’s main shaft from build-up of high stresses, during extraction of ore from a shaft pillar. Numerical results showed that excavation of the slot diverts high stresses away from the main shaft through stress redistribution.
