Quality Cost Assessment in Mine Tunnelling With Drilling and Blasting

Abstract

A decision making process for equipment selection in mine lateral development is presented. This addressess the need of mine development projects to increase actual lateral development rates for single headings using drilling and blasting techniques. The approach described in this papaer focuses on quality issues in a lateral development cycle by linking them to the "time value of money" concept. Th total poor quality cost estimation in lateral development is presented in case study #1, where typical lateral development practice at Falconbridge Ltd (now Xstrata Nickel) in the Sudbury basin was analyzed. A conceptual example, presented in case study#2, showa the practical application of the proposed approach and emphasizes the benefits of discrete event simulation in conjunction with process quality quantification in mine lateral development.