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Pre-Symposium Workshops

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Slope Stability 2022 is offering Workshops on Monday, October 17 as part of the official symposium program. Registration for Workshops is available through the Symposium Registration System, but you do not need to be a symposium delegate to attend a Workshop.

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​Summary of Workshops:

  • W1: Integrating Water Management into Underground Mining Project Planning (Full-Day)

  • W2: Sampling and Laboratory Testing for Open Pit Operations (Half-Day)

  • W3: GCE Slope Performance Monitoring Professional Development Course Kick-off (Half-Day)

  • W4: From Soup to Nuts: An Overview of Slope Stability Investigations, Design, and Mitigation Construction Using State-of-the-Art Practices (Full-Day)

  • W5: Evolving Technologies for Slope Stability Studies (Full-Day)

  • W6: The benefits of integrating pitwall design into strategic mine planning and employing geotechnically optimal pitwall profiles. Demonstration through case studies of four open pit mines (Full-Day)

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Slope Stability 2022 reserves the right to cancel a short course/workshop should the minimum number of registrants not be reached. In the event of a cancellation, registrants will be notified by email and offered a transfer to another workshop or a full refund.

 

See detailed descriptions, timing and pricing below.

W1: Integrating Water Management into Underground Mining Project Planning

Offered by: Piteau Associates

Time: Full-day (8:00 am – 4:00 pm)

Cost: Early - $450 (Students $200) • Regular - $500 (Students $225)

 

Description: Mining is moving underground at a rapid pace. The “easy pickings” near the surface are increasingly harder to find, and mineral resources are deeper and more complex than ever before. This is a trend that is only likely to increase going forward, with all of the complications that underground mining brings – one of those being challenging water management. However, it doesn’t have to be that way – identifying and addressing the likely water management challenges that can affect a mine during the project and planning stage has been shown to result in significant improvements to operational efficiency and safety, water security and may even improve overall project economics. Do it early, and do it right, and your project team will thank you for it.

W2: Sampling and Laboratory Testing for Open Pit Operations

Offered by: Large Open Pit Project and Golder/WSP

Time: Half-day (8:00 am – 12:00 pm)
Cost: Early - $225 (Students $100) • Regular - $250 (Students $125)

Description: This half day workshop for slope stability practitioners, sponsored by the Large Open Pit Project, covers: 

  1. Sampling 

  2. Point Load Testing 

  3. Direct Shear Testing

  4. UCS and Triaxial Testing 

  5. Combining Data sets to establish intact failure envelopes including Hoek-Brown

W3: GCE Slope Performance Monitoring Professional Development Course Kick-off

Offered by:  Geotechnical Center of Excellence at the University of Arizona

Time: Half-day (8:00 am – 12:00 pm)
Cost: Early - $225 (Students $100) • Regular - $250 (Students $125)

Description: This half-day workshop will align with the in-development Slope Performance Monitoring online course, hosted by the Geotechnical Centre of Excellence at the University of Arizona.

 

Those already registered for the GCE’s course will be able to attend this workshop at no cost and enjoy some in-person component to the online learnings. Workshop attendees who are not already registered for the course would be eligible to pay a reduced fee for the online course. More details to come!

W4: From Soup to Nuts: An Overview of Slope Stability Investigations, Design, and Mitigation Construction Using State-of-the-Art Practices

Offered by: GeoStabilization International

Time: Full-day (8:00 am – 4:00 pm)
Cost: Early - $450 (Students $200) • Regular - $500 (Students $225)

Description: Rockfalls and landslides are geotechnical hazards that are experienced in many different environments including transportation corridors and mining environments. These hazards can be identified, assessed, and potentially mitigated. The objective of this workshop is to present state-of-the-art practices in investigating and characterizing slope instabilities and translating the information into practical and effective mitigation and monitoring methods. Remote-sensing based investigation and monitoring methods, mitigation constructability and cost-benefit concerns, maintenance considerations, and asset management strategies will be discussed.

W5: Evolving Technologies for Slope Stability Studies

Offered by: Itasca International 

Time: Full-day (8:00 am – 4:00 pm)
Cost: Early - $450 (Students $200) • Regular - $500 (Students $225)
Description: This one-day-long workshop reviews cutting-edge technologies being applied in the analysis of large-scale slope stability. The main sessions include powerful data processing approaches, new material models to better represent rock masses, insights into the relevance of water, and geomechanical perspectives of blasting. The “Evolving technologies for slope stability studies” workshop will cover the following topics:

  • Novel techniques for data processing for input to analysis 

  • Using interpolation and block model conforming to overcome typical kriging limitations

  • Predicting rock strength from core logging and machine learning

  • New rock mass behavior models for 

  • A strain-softening alternative to the Hoek-Brown D-factor 

  • Modeling multiple ubiquitous joints in rock

  • New insights into water relevance in slope stability 

  • When and where hydromechanical coupling is important

  • Considerations for transient surface water

  • Blasting from the geomechanical perspective 

  • GMX perspective on blasting

  • Applied numerical modeling

  • Scales of analysis

W6: The benefits of integrating pitwall design into strategic mine planning and employing geotechnically optimal pitwall profiles. Demonstration through case studies of four open pit mines

Offered by: OptimalSlope, UK

Time: Full-day (8:00 am – 4:00 pm)
Cost: Early - $450 (Students $200) • Regular - $500 (Students $225)

Description: Traditionally the design of pitwall inclinations is carried out by geotechnical teams with little interaction with mining engineers; to overcome the current limitations, participants will be introduced to a design methodology where pitwall inclinations are selected accounting for the pit depth and integrated into the strategic mine design (Utili et al., 2022). Also in current design practice, pit wall profiles are often designed to be planar in cross-section, especially within each rock layer. A new slope design software, OptimalSlope[1], can determine geotechnically optimal pitwall profiles of depth varying inclination for the design of each sector of the mine. The improvements in both financial metrics (e.g. NPV, payback period and internal rate of return) and environmental ones (reduction in carbon footprint and energy consumption) that can be gained by adopting the proposed methodology will be showcased through case studies of real gold and copper mines.
Finally in order to determine geotechnically optimal pit wall profiles for anisotropic rock masses featured by several joint sets (Agosti, Cylwik, Utili 2022b), participants will also be introduced to a new method (Cylwik, 2021) to estimate anisotropic equivalent cohesion (c) and internal friction (φ) parameters for a jointed rock-mass from information on joint orientation and persistence for the 2D cross sections of the pit relevant for design purposes. See www.optimalslope.com

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