Abstract
Drilling forms an important component of a drill and blast cycle consuming a considerable time and resources of an excavation cycle and necessitates scientific selection and performance prediction. Drill penetration rate is influenced by many controllable and uncontrollable parameters such as intact rock, rock mass, bit, machine’s design and operational parameters with varying degree of influence. Often, the predicted versus measured drilling rate has lot of variances thereby affecting drill economics, project time lines and feasibility. Wrong selection of drilling equipment can lead to an increase in development cycle time up to 30 to 40%. Therefore, in this study the challenges faced in selection of a right drill equipment and its associated influential factors are assessed. Selection methodology for a set of working ranges of underground drilling rigs is developed. Performance studies for mechanized drill jumbos operating in Indian and Bhutan underground hard rock environment are conducted. Performance studies for drill jumbos in underground hard rock mines over a period of one year indicated that the machine’s availability is around 80% however its utilization is found to be only about 30% with 76% productivity on an average. The studies indicated that selection of drilling equipment affects tunnelling cycle greatly in civil excavations compared to mine development headings owing to larger scale and volume in former. However, there is a requirement of developing an all-inclusive drillability model which aids in selection of right drill equipment for obtaining a desired rate of drilling in a given geotechnical environment.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Director, NIRM, Mine Management of Hindustan Zinc Limited, India and the Project Authorities of Punatsangchhu-II Hydroelectric Project, Bhutan for allowing the authors to perform the studies. The support extended by the officials of Rock Excavation Laboratory, Department of Mining Engineering, IIT (ISM) is duly acknowledged. This forms the part of PhD work being accomplished by the first author at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad.
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Prasad, B.N.V.S., Murthy, V.M.S.R., Naik, S.R. (2022). Challenges in Drill Equipment Selection vis-à-vis Underground Excavations – A Methodology. In: Verma, A.K., et al. Proceedings of Geotechnical Challenges in Mining, Tunneling and Underground Infrastructures. ICGMTU 2021. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 228. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9770-8_9
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