Designing infill directional drilling in mineral exploration by using particle swarm optimization algorithm
- PDF / 3,349,861 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 42 Downloads / 199 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Designing infill directional drilling in mineral exploration by using particle swarm optimization algorithm Moslem Fatehi 1 & Hooshang Asadi Haroni 1 & Amin Hossein Morshedy 2
Received: 27 June 2017 / Accepted: 20 September 2017 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2017
Abstract Geostatistical optimization in designing infill boreholes is an important cost-effective approach in increasing the accuracy of the tonnage and grade of an ore deposit. In this research, a new approach is proposed to design the optimum infill directional boreholes. In the proposed approach, the Kriging estimation variance is considered as the objective function and the number and properties of the optimum boreholes are estimated to minimize the objective function. The optimization procedure is implemented by Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. Range of the spatial and directional properties of new boreholes is determined by considering the primary information of the mineralization and administrative constraint of drilling. Then, the PSO algorithm is iteratively applied, and in each iteration, the variation of the estimated Kriging variance after drilling the new boreholes is determined and properties of the new boreholes are updated. The iterative procedure of the algorithm is continued until minimum Kriging variance is satisfied. The approach was applied to the Dalli Cu-Au porphyry deposit in Iran and three new infill directional boreholes were designed by considering six earlier boreholes from the preliminary exploration stage. New optimum boreholes were located where less information from the preliminary exploration stage exists and the highest variance is considered. Two new boreholes are near to vertical
* Hooshang Asadi Haroni [email protected] * Amin Hossein Morshedy [email protected] 1
Department of Mining Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran
2
Department of Mining and Metallurgy Engineering, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran
(78°) and the third is an inclined with 55° dip. By drilling these three new boreholes, the estimated grade model could be upgraded by 20%. For simplicity, quickness and the ability to search for the required numbers and specifications of a group of directional boreholes in a 3D environment are the most advantages aspects of the proposed approach. Keywords Additional boreholes . Estimated Kriging variance . Particle swarm optimization (PSO) . Dalli Cu-Au deposit . Iran
Introduction Drilling is the most expensive part of a mineral exploration project; therefore, it is important to determine the optimum number and spatial properties of boreholes in order to obtain the maximum information with minimum cost (Scheck and Chou 1983). The exploration boreholes in different stages of mineral exploration are determined on the basis of various technical objectives and strategies. The initial boreholes are often designed by using individual and/or integrated analysis of geophysical, geochemical, and geological data to identify favorable mineralization in the preliminary e
Data Loading...
