Digital simulation in solving problems of surface and underground mining technologies

Abstract

According to the estimates of competent experts, the mature economies are at the first stage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution called to shape a new technological framework. A feature of this stage is technological innovations and improvement based on the wide application of digital information. Here belong such methods as Big Data, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Storage and cloud-based interpretation of data, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Industrial Internet. The critical element of a digital technology in terms of mining is the information system. The latter is meant to model components of mining technologies and to provide instruments for using the models in engineering support of mining operations. Such modeling involves mining and geologica l information systems (MGIS), as rule. Despite different implementation programs, all MGIS are compatible with vector, carcass and block models of problem solution in various areas of mining. O the whole, it can be sated that by now, within MGIS development, the instrumental framework has been created for digital simulation in mining technologies. The situation is worse in modeling process flowsheets while such models can promote optimization of engineering solutions, on the one hand, and offer a virtual model of real equipment operation, on the other hand. Such MGIS named as MINEFRAME has been successively advanced by the Mining Institute, KSC RAS for more than 20 years. The features of MINEFRAME are:1. Structure of models, which ensures integrity of model elements and simplifies operation;2. Storage of models in data base, which enables multi-user mode of operation within one or a number of projects.3. Protection of models from unauthorized changing; to this effect, a user is granted access to certain models and any change is automatically recorded in an e-log which can be used to recover the changed models.The MINEFRAME functional and architecture allow using this MGIS both as individual workplace of geologists, surveyors, or technologies, or as a geoinformation system of mine. In the latter case, due to multiuser access to the models of objects of a mining technology and thanks to 3D visualization facilities, it is possible to generate a uniform virtual mine space.