Software developed for calculation of Final Pit Limits of Open Pit Mines Using Moving Cone II Technique

   Abstract:
      One of the important aspects of mine design is define the mineable ore reserve. In open pit mine, the mineable ore reserve will not be estimated without the final pit limits are found. In recent years the computer has played the major role to design the final pit limits. Computerized pit design approaches have low time consuming and high accuracy. The positive moving cone technique is one of the computerized algorithms. The positive moving cone technique is quite straightforward algorithm but it can not guarantee designing the optimum (maximum valued) pit for some block models. This weakness is demonstrated by two well-known situations. Firstly, the algorithm?s inability to handle overlapping waste blocks from multiple cones, thus missing the optimum, and secondly, instances where ore blocks at given levels wrongly contribute to the positive values of cones of deeper lying ore blocks thus given pit expansion beyond the optimum. In this paper describes the moving cone II technique and a program to find the ultimate pit limit of open pit mines.