Road and railway tunnels in cold regions are often affected by problems related to water leakage and freezing temperatures. Water leakage in a tunnel leads to ice growth when the temperature goes below freezing and creates favourable environment for fallouts of shotcrete and rock. This paper presents results and observations from laboratory freezing – thawing experiments on rock blocks covered with shotcrete and focuses on the degradation of the shotcrete-rock interface due to ice growth.. The initiation and the development of freeze-induced micro cracks in shotcrete-rock interface were studied by continuously monitoring acoustic emissions (AE) and temperature. The clustering of the AE events during freezing and thawing indicates that micro cracks appeared in the shotcrete-rock interface and caused adhesion failure. The larger number of AE events in the panels, with access to water during freezing, confirmed that water contributes to material deterioration and also reduces the adhesive strength.

Studying the deterioration of shotcrete due to freezing and thawing is important for improvement of the understanding of the failure mechanisms/debonding of shotcrete in cold regions. Water leakage in a tunnel leads to ice growth during freezing temperature and ultimately creates favorable environment for fallouts of shotcrete and rock. Repeated freezing and thawing of shotcrete lead to development of new micro cracks and propagation of pre-existing micro cracks. In this study, test panels of granite with dimension 800 x 800 x 80 mm covered with 50-mm thick shotcrete were subjected to freezing and thawing action in a controlled environment. The initiation and the development of freeze-induced micro cracks in shotcrete-rock interface were studied by continuously monitoring acoustic emissions (AE) and temperature. The clustering of the AE events during freezing and thawing indicates that micro cracks appeared in the shotcrete-rock interface and caused adhesion failure. The larger number of AE events in the panels, with access to water during freezing, confirmed that water contributes to material deterioration and also reduces the adhesive strength. The test results showed that most of the acoustic emission occurred during the freezing cycle and the number of acoustic emission events did not increase with the successive increase of the number of freezing and thawing cycles.

Tailings dam failures have been occurring in recent years. Many of these failures have caused human casualties, destruction of property, and damage to environment and huge economic loss to the mining industry. The monitoring of the dam is essential to know the existing state of the dams and to ensure the safety of the dam over its life time. The present study has been conducted to test the applicability of electrical resistivity and self-potential (SP), for detecting anomalous seepage through mine tailings dams in Sweden and monitoring the physical condition of the dam. This study has demonstrated the potential of using geoelectrical methods for monitoring the conditions of the tailing dams related to seepage.

The modern mining industry is highly mechanised and relies on massive, multimillion-dollar pieces of equipment to achieve production targets. In an increasingly challenging international economic climate, mining operations are reliant on economies of scale to remain competitive. To maximise revenue, it is imperative that at each stage of the mining process, equipment is operating optimally without preventable and unnecessary interruptions. As a result, the focus of all mining operations is to increase equipment uptime and utilisation.The data used for this investigation have been sourced from the Aitik mine, a large open pit copper mine in Northern Sweden. In the loading area, power shovels load trucks with blasted material for transport, either to the crushers or to the waste dumps. The Aitik mine employs various computer-aided applications to track and maintain mobile mining equipment like the shovels. These applications also serve as chronological operational and maintenance databases for the equipment. This paper’s study of six mining shovels is based on the analysis of three data types: historical maintenance data from CMMS Maximo, operational data from mine management system Cat® MineStar™, and event-log data from individual shovels.The results indicate that such a synthesis is viable. A regular time-lapse integration of the diverse data types displays potential and could prove helpful in achieving overall improvements in maintenance.

Several dam failure accidents have occurred during the last years and mine tailings dam failures are occurring at relatively high rates. Studies of past earth dam failures show embankment dam problems and failures are often related to internal erosion in one way or another. Geophysical methods have the potential of detecting internal erosion processes and anomalous seepage at an early stage of their development. The methods have been tested to monitor and investigate earth dams; however the methods have not been used very much in mine tailings dam. The present study has been conducted to test the applicability of geophysical methods, mainly electrical resistivity and self-potential (SP), for detecting anomalous seepage through mine tailing dams and monitoring the physical condition of the dam. Field measurements of resistivity and self-potential have been performed in the Kiruna, Aitik and Kristineberg tailings dams to look for streaming potentials, inhomogeneities and time variations of electrical properties and self-potentials. SP and resistivity measurements have also been carried out with fixed electrodes in the Kiruna and Kristineberg dam at a roughly monthly interval during one year starting in November 2003 and ending in October 2004. Laboratory measurements of resistivity have been carried out on different soil samples from the tailings dams to look for eventual changes in electrical properties with change in grain size and water content. The electric resistivity survey in the Kristineberg provides a good image of the subsurface resistivity distribution associated with filling materials and water table in the dam. The results of the electrical resistivity survey from 2004 on the Kristineberg tailings dam are fairly similar to those obtained from in 2003. The SP distribution in the dam also reveals that there are no significant changes in SP values from 2003 to 2004. The resistivity from the fixed electrodes indicates a seasonal variation in the apparent resistivity representing the freezing and thawing effect within in the dam. The SP measurements from the fixed electrode at the Kristineberg dam, shows fairly stable values during summer and more unstable during the winter probably due to change in contact resistance. The result from the 2002 SP measurements in the Kiruna dam reveals a general pattern of positive SP values at the downstream side, which is in agreement with the expected result of streaming potentials developed over the dam core. The dam was raised during the summer 2003 and new SP measurements were repeated thereafter during the autumns of 2003 and 2004 in the same areas as for the 2002 measurements. The results from 2003 measurements deviate from 2002 measurements; with in general, more negative potentials along the downstream slope. The potential distribution obtained from the 2004 measurements is compatible with the results obtained before the raising of the dam. The SP data from the fixed electrode shows unsteady physical conditions within the dam after increasing the height of the dam. The apparent resistivity from fixed electrode survey is much influenced by the variations of the pool level of the tailings pond. Some positive SP anomalies on the downstream slope of the IJ-dam at Aitik have been identified that could be related to the seepage through the dam. A distinct positive anomaly at the coordinate 7451330 north that continues to the toe of the downstream slope of the dam is generated from a known seepage of the water. The laboratory measurements on soil samples from the dams reveal a decrease in resistivity as finer particles are added to the samples that contained coarser fractions. Internal erosion may thus be reflected by increase in resistivity. This work has demonstrated the potential of using resistivity and self-potential methods for monitoring the physical condition, and the time changes in the condition of mine tailings dams.