SHAFT DEFORMATION

Modelling of shaft deflection is very difficult. Using large amounts of calibration data in a minescale NL model, a very detailed building of the given mine geometry and a large number of simulated mining steps an excellent fit between modelled and observed shaft displacements was achieved in this example model.

In the example (Fig. 1), the model results of the shaft deflection [in mm] are plotted with the measured movements with an excellent match with deviations smaller ~20mm over a total shaft length of about 1000 m.

The result demonstrates that to properly understand shaft damage, both movements and damage need to be correctly simulated. Only accurate calibrated NL models are able to properly simulate minescale problems to correctly replicate global deformation down to detailed development and infrastructure length scale.

Fig. 1: Comparison between shaft deflection measurement and experimental results