Monsalve, Juan J.2019-06-262019-06-262019-05-10http://hdl.handle.net/10919/90659According to the Mine Health and Safety Administration (MSHA), between 2006 and 2016, the underground stone mining industry had the highest fatality rate in 4 out of 10 years, compared to any other type of mining in the United States. Additionally, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) stated that structurally controlled instability is a predominant failure mechanism in underground limestone mines. This type of instability occurs when the different discontinuity sets intercept with each other forming rock blocks that displace inwards the tunnel as the excavation takes place, posing a great hazard for miners and overall mine planning. In recent years, Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has been used for mapping and characterizing fractures present in a rock mass. TLS is a technology that allows to generate a three-dimensional multimillion point cloud of a scanned area. In addition to this, the advances in computing power throughout the past years, have allowed numerical modeling codes to represent more realistically the behavior of a fractured rock masses. This work presents and implements a methodology that integrates laser scanning technology along with Discrete Element Modeling as tools for characterizing, preventing, and managing structurally controlled instability that may affect large-opening underground mines. The stability of an underground limestone mine that extracts a dipping ore body with a room and pillar (and eventual stoping) mining method is analyzed with this approach. While this methodology is proposed based on a specific case study that does not meet the requirements to be designed with current NIOSH published guidelines, this process proposes a general methodology that can be applied in any mine experiencing similar failure mechanisms, considering site-specific conditions. The aim of this study is to ensure the safety of mine workers and to reduce accidents that arise from ground control issues. The results obtained from this methodology allowed us to generate Probability Density Functions to estimate the probability of rock fall in the excavations. These models were also validated by comparing the numerical model results with those obtained from the laser scans.ETDen-USCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United StatesTerrestrial Laser ScanningDiscrete Element Method3DECDiscrete Fracture NetworkGround ControlUnderground Limestone MinesThesis