PREDICTED
BEHAVIOUR OF KIIRUNAVAARA MINE USING EQUIVALENT CONTINUUM MODEL FOR JOINTED
ROCKS
T.G. Sitharam Gali Madhavi Latha Saurabh
Puri Amit Pandey
Associate
Professor Research Associate
Students, BHU, Varanasi
Bangalore - 560 012
INDIA
e-mail: sitharam@civil.iisc.ernet.in
A practical equivalent continuum numerical model, previously developed for simulating the behaviour of jointed rock mass from the properties of intact rock and the properties of joints, has been incorporated in the commercial finite difference programme FLAC. This paper verifies the validity of this model for the case of Kiirunavara mine in Sweden. The ore body of the mine is relatively strong surrounded by competent quartz porphyry on the hanging wall and syenite porphyry on the footwall. The rock mass is relatively jointed, with two to three joint sets occurring in 8 different structural domains of the mine. The mine has experienced large-scale stability problems. This paper presents the results of numerical modeling applied to the Kiirunavara mine. Sequential mining was simulated in the model by representing the failure mass using null model in each step. The failure surface reported from the field observations was compared with the predicted failure surface from the numerical analysis. The model predicted the type of failure and the excavation depth at which the first signs of failure were observed in the field fairly well. Results from this study confirmed the effectiveness of the practical equivalent continuum model for slope stability problems in jointed rocks.