Optimizing Pillar Design for Improved Stability and Enhanced Production in Underground Stone Mines

"Safety is a value, not just a Priority" Geomechanically stable underground excavations require continuous assessment of rock mass behavior for maximizing safety. Optimizing pillar design is essential for preventing hazardous incidents and improving production in room-and-pillar mines. Maintaining regional and global stability is complicated for underground carbonate or stone deposits, where extensive fracture networks and groundwater flow become leading factors for generating unsteady ground conditions including karsts. A sudden encounter with karst cavities during mine advance may lead to safety issues, including ground collapse and outflow of unconsolidated sediments and groundwater. The presence of these eroded zones in pillars may cause their failure and poses a risk to the lives of miners apart from disrupting the pre-planned mining operations. A pervasive presence of joints and fractures plays a primary role in promoting structurally controlled failures in stone mines, which accelerates upon interaction with the karst cavities. The prevalent empirical and analytical approaches for pillar design ignore the geotechnical complexities such as the spatial density of discontinuities, karst voids, and deviation from the design during short-range mine planning. With the increasing market demand for limestone products, mining organizations, as well as enforcement agencies, are investing in research for increasing the efficiency of extracting valuable resources. While economical productivity is essential, preventing risks and ensuring the safety of miners remains the cardinal objective of mining operations. According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), since 2000, about 31% of occupational fatalities at all underground mines in the United States are caused due to ground collapse, which rises to 39% for underground stone mines. The objective of this study is to provide a reliable and methodological approach for pillar design in underground room-and-pillar hard rock mines for safe and efficient ore recovery. The numerical modeling techniques, implemented for a case study stone mine, could provide a pragmatic framework to assess the effect of karsts on rock mass behavior, and design future pillars detected with voids. The research uses data acquired from using remote sensing techniques, such as LiDAR and Ground-penetrating Radar surveys, to map the excavation characteristics. Discontinuum modeling was valuable for analyzing the pillar strength in the presence of discontinuities and cavities, as well as estimating a safe design standard. Discrete Fracture Networks, created using statistical information from discontinuity mapping, were employed to simulate the joints pervading the rock mass. This proposed research includes the calibration of rock mass properties to translate the effect of discontinuities to continuum models. Continuum modeling proved effective in analyzing regional stability along with characterizing the redistributed stress regime by imitating the excavation sequence. The results from pillar-scale and local-scale analyses are converged to optimize pillar design on a global scale and estimate the feasibility of secondary recovery in stone mines with a dominating discontinuity network and karst terrane. Stochastic analysis using finite volume modeling helped evaluate the performance of modified pillars to assist production while maintaining safety standards. The proposed research is valuable for improving future design parameters, excavation practices, and maintaining a balance between an approach towards increased safety while enhancing production.