Software Solutions in Mining

Most software packages that design hole layouts in underground blasting operations sit on top of CAD graphics engines and rely on selecting tools from toolbars to proceed with and complete the blast design process. This is very laborious, time consuming; sometimes, specialized blasting design for complete stopes using CAD can take days.

 

iRing Inc. has designed AEGIS Designer that instantly designs ring patterns for whole stopes, including drilling, charging and timing, and AEGIS Analyzer thatanalyzes blasting patterns in terms of overbreak and dilution based on cavity monitoring surveys.

 

Analyzer can assist in excavation cavity prediction as well as view the rock mass tones blasted, in multiple views. Together with Designer, Analyzer can help plan recoveries for different ore grades. Different designs can be compared within seconds.

 

Based in Canada, iRing Inc. has been operational since 2000 and has revolutionalized the way traditional underground blast design has been done.

 

Mining engineers and/or planners can use AEGIS Designer to design stopes according to specific rules customized for an intended design. Analyzer helps to look at the radial break around blastholes to determine ton(nes) of ore blasted and grades produced based on ore block modeling.

 

A Consulting Engineer at iRing Inc., Mr. Christopher Preston says. “Perhaps at some stage, blasting will evolve into an exact science such that the primary crusher will be the blasting action in stopes and drifts with underground crushing relegated to surface.”

 

He observes that secondary blasting will end as computer modeling will help achieve exact drilling and putting the correct explosive energy at the right position within a blasting pattern.

 

Future AEGIS upgrades will include a fragmentation model that has been peer-reviewed at conferences and will be added to the Analyzer software package by Christmas 2014. Designer will include specific calculators that will provide handy information and guidelines for problems encountered in mining (powder factors, energy factors, seismic energies, distribution indexes, etc).

 

The company markets ring design and other software through CAE Mining and MineRP and has had customers in Australia, Africa and North America.

 

Meanwhile,Christopher has been working to devise a new methodology of making ammonium nitrate in a form more suitable than blasting grade prills. He says this is revolutionary since it opens up a new way to get a value added ammonium nitrate (waterproof and high density) without using expensive prilling tower technology.

Contributor,

 

Christopher Preston, P.Eng. MCP

Consulting Engineer

chris.preston@iring.ca

www.iring.ca