Modern Mining November 2021

Maptek Geology challenge winner solves data complexity problem

Maptek has announced the inaugural Maptek Geology Challenge winner as Henry Dillon, senior geologist with global consultants, Golder, a member of WSP. Dillon, who works in Christchurch, New Zealand, applied a combination of Maptek geology tools to model complex shallow surface geology beneath a proposed engi- neering structure. “Our key problem was how to use all the data in the boreholes to model all the geol- ogies and still get the low and high density sands in the right places throughout those drillholes,” Dillon says. “The answer was to assign and use numeric values and combine the data with soil behaviour types and shear wave veloci- ties to control the geological model.” Dillon applied Maptek Vulcan, Vulcan Geo l ogyCore , Da t a Ana l yser and DomainMCF for the challenge, which had to be completed over one week earlier this year. “DomainMCF handled complicated interfingering of sandy and silty materials and modelled sand-gravel interactions, generating the complex lithological interac- tions expected from braided river systems,” Dillon says. Speed i s a known bene f i t o f DomainMCF and proved to be the case for the Christchurch study. “We were able to construct a reason-

Winners of the 2021 Maptek Geology Challenge Henry Dillon, Golder (left) with Reece Stewart, Anglo American (top right) and Matt Green, Evolution Mining (lower right).

time consuming - we can spread the ben- efit,” Dillon says. The challenge was launched as part of Maptek Connect, a 24 hour online confer- ence delivered in May. Maptek provided access to various software tools that par- ticipants could apply to a geology-related application of their choice, with an empha- sis on innovation. Dillon’s reward was a cash prize and DomainMCF hours for Golder, which he plans to assign to development projects that would benefit from the simple workflow approach that quickly produces an accurate geological model from a dataset. 

able lithological model from drillhole and cone penetrometer test data for an area of known geological complexity. We sent 193 000 data points to DomainMCF and received our model after 13 minutes and 6 seconds!” Dillon comments. As well as displaying an innovative approach to geotechnical assessment of performance and design for the foundation of a future structure, Dillon provided invalu- able feedback for improving the integrated modelling solution for all users. “DomainMCF has targeted the mining industry, but many other industries find tra- ditional modelling processes to be equally

High-precision, accurate sampling for mines and their customers

Innovation in Multotec’s proven hammer samplers allows two con- secutive samples to be taken from the product stream in quick succession, ensuring two sets of accurate results – one for the mine and one for the customer. “A single sample increment cannot simply be divided into roughly two equal parts,” says Refilwe Makgae, senior application engineer at Multotec. “This can result in up to five of the nine sam- pling errors occurring in a single step.” She emphasises that each consecutive increment must instead be carefully diverted to its own bin, so that successive increments do not contaminate each other. Multotec has therefore developed a reliable flopper gate that is easy to operate and gives feedback about the flopper positioning. “This ensures that a good seal is achieved, preventing sample cross-contamination,” says Makgae. “For existing operations where this new requirement is imposed, this innovation can be easily retrofitted.” She notes that high levels of precision in sampling can only be achieved with fine design tolerances for each application. For this purpose, Multotec has developed software integration mod-

els across AutoCAD Inventor and programming code, to automate parts of the design. This process uses pre-programmed design logic and interpolates from the company’s data library which covers a worldwide footprint of over 800 hammer samplers in the field. 

Multotec has a worldwide footprint of over 800 hammer samplers in the field.

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