The safe geometrical configuration of the mine overburden dumps largely depends on the size distribution of the fragmented rock and its shear resistence characteristics. The aggregate mixture of fragmented rock and loose soil developed interlocking effect thereby strengthening the overall safety of mine overburden dumps. The large rock blocks are traditionally excluded from the standard sieving analysis. Present work proposed an alternative method to characterise the whole overburden dumps geomaterial composition including large, medium rock fragments and loose soil using digital image processing technique. The method enables to know the size distribution of geomaterials present within the mine overburden dumps. The methods also overcome the problems of super-imposition of different blocks within the 2D image of the dump profile. The process is simple and economic for the mining industry.
Mine overburden dumps is largest man made structure in this earth. The planning and design of this mine overburden dumps requires structural understanding of the geomaterial composed in it. The size and shape of the overburden dumps geomaterial depends on the mechanical means of removal of top overburden layer. Many research indicates that safety of the mine overburden dumps depends on the alignment of dumping of different geomaterial. In actuality, segregation of layer wise dumping on size characteristics often becomes inoperative in standard geomining condition in an open pit mine. Blasted muck haul by shovel and dump at top of internal/external dumps makes it heterogeneous mixture of geomaterial. Analysing stability of these dumps assuming homogeneity, isotropic condition compromised the very base of the problem. There are instances of failure even when factor of safety is greater than unity. So engineers felt the necessity to characterise geomaterial by non-contact methods.
Rock fragments and loose soil are often densely packed. This makes the situation difficult to process further. The size, shape and texture of rock are very important parameter for physico-mechanical characterisation (Xu et al., 2008). In mining, size and shape distributions of rock fragments determines the performance of blasting and influence the sequence whole mining production (Sereshki et al., 2016). In quarry production, size, shape and texture of rock particles must fit the requirements of customers, for example highway, railway construction companies, building industries, etc (Karakus et al., 2010).
