Harmony Gold Chair in Rock Engineering and Numerical Modelling
This research chair was established in the Department of Mining Engineering in 2015 as a vehicle to assist the South African mining industry to conduct research in rock engineering, and specifically the use of numerical modelling techniques within the field. It will ultimately serve the whole mining industry and evaluate substantially more rock engineering issues than originally intended.
It is focused on directed research into specific rock engineering problems and the associated solutions. Specific objectives include promoting study and research in the field of rock engineering, furthering education and learning in the field of rock engineering at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and furthering the interaction between academic institutions and the mining industry.
It is in its third three-year funding cycle by Harmony Gold, which will continue until the end of December 2022. The acting Chairholder is Prof Francois Malan
Research undertaken in this Chair includes developing new mine design criteria for deep gold mines, exploiting remnants in old mines and a study of mining rate.
Research topics include the following strategic projects:
- Developing enhanced design criteria for mature deep-level mines.
- Investigating the use of a limit equilibrium model to simulate pillar and remnant behaviour in gold mines.
- Investigating the use of closure data as a proxy measure of energy stably dissipated during fracture formation and stable movements on discontinuities such as bedding planes.
- Investigating the use of underground instrumentation as a diagnostic measure of rock mass behaviour.
- Testing the newly developed concepts and criteria in a number of practical situations at Harmony Gold operations.
- The continuous development of the inelastic constitutive models used in numerical codes. Investigations to improve the ability of the code to handle large-scale mining areas while providing accurate and detailed results will be undertaken.
The Chair has the strategic aim of developing specialised rock engineering research capacity at the University of Pretoria. Any suggestions of applied or fundamental research topics within rock engineering can be submitted to Prof Francois Malan at [email protected].