1899 c. Material handling: Muck the blasted material from the draw bell on the foot drift, crush it, and transport it to the surface via a conveyor belt. d. Backfilling: Seal the access to the stope from the foot drift and backfill the stope by bringing in material from the stope Figure 5 – Schematic illustration of the Raise mining method; vertical cross section; only steps (a) to (c) are shown 6.2 Stope and panel layout Design of stopes varies in shape and size to give enough flexibility to account for changing geological and geotechnical conditions of the rock mass. In addition, challenges facing mix optimization, curing and strength development of backfill which are not fully resolved at the current state of the project (PFS) can be met by a change in stope layout without change of the overall layout of the mine. Three variations of stope layout are considered (Figure 6): ● Option 1: Circular-shaped stopes; full extraction; diameter = 45 m; cross section = 1 582 m² ● Option 2: Hexagonal-shaped stopes; full extraction; cross section = 1 754 m² ● Option 3: Hexagonal-shaped stopes; reduced extraction; honey-comb structure formed by 8 m wide panel pillars between stopes; cross section = 1 186 m² Figure 6 – Examples of stope and panel layout; left: Option 1 – circular shaped stopes; right: Option 3 - hexagonal-shaped stopes; reduced extraction; honey-comb structure through panel pillars A mining block comprises 12 stopes which are grouped in 3 rows with 4 stopes each. The outer boundary of the blocks follows the shape of a parallelogram. This shape is driven by the alignment of the main drifts in the development levels. Rationale of the stope design using different layouts is that the center
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