Ground vibrations from blasting are acoustic waves that propagate through the earth. They are also termed seismic waves because their propagation characteristics are similar to the ground motions produced by earthquakes. Amplitude of ground vibration induced by blasting may vary significantly at or around an open pit mine depending on parameters such as the maximum amount of explosive detonating at a time interval and the physical distance between the shot and the location of concern, whereas the frequency of vibration mainly vary depending on the geology and blast delay intervals. Therefore evaluation and assessment of ground vibration condition at or around an open pit mine is necessary. The objective of the proposed research study is to monitor and record the ground vibration and to investigate and assess the vibration conditions at neighbouring districts that are induced by production blasting operations at Usak KiSladag Gold Mine. In this research study, several parameters such as the ground vibration velocity, the amount of charge per delay, the physical distance to the location of monitoring device or residential structures are recorded, analyzed and evaluated together with the frequencies of the seismic waves. The determined ground vibration velocities are compared with the allowable limits given in Turkish Regulation and US Federal Regulation. Thus, the compliance of the ground vibrations with the above mentioned regulations are discussed and assessed. Furthermore, the parameters which affect the ground vibration are discussed and determined. In this study, the monitored and the recorded ground vibrations are evaluated from structural damage potential and human disturbance points of views. It is determined that the ground vibration levels recorded during this study and analyzed from the past records comply with Turkish and US Federal regulations. It is concluded that no damage has been occurred in structures at surrounding settlements and the occupants were not disturbed by the direct effect of vibrations in the past and at present. The analysis proved that the blasting operations to be conducted in the future will not create any damage and disturbance provided that the charge detonated per delay is kept less than 155 kg&amp / #8217 / s.

Real-time optimization of drilling parameters during drilling operations aims to optimize weight on bit, bit rotation speed for obtaining maximum drilling rate as well as minimizing the drilling cost. The process is considered to be formation specific. A statistical method such as multiple linear regression technique has been used for the drilling optimization. An extensive literature survey on drilling optimization was conducted for this research study. A model is developed for this purpose using actual field data collected through modern well monitoring and data recording systems, which predicts the rate of drilling penetration as a function of available parameters. The rate of penetration general equation is optimized for effective functions at each data point. In order to optimize the parameters in the field, a computer network is required to be developed. The computer network will keep the piped data directly from the data source, and continuously be collecting the new data to be fed. A database present at the central computer will be continuously calculating the developed model parameters by means of multiple regression technique and inform the team at the field. The field engineer will transmit the current drilling parameters back to the central computer, and the headquarters will determine the new model parameters and optimum drilling parameters by including the recently received information. Therefore, there will be a real-time-optimization process. It is considered that this technique is going to be widely used in future drilling activities since it could reduce drilling costs and minimize probability of encountering problems due to working with optimized parameters. It has been found that drilling rate of penetration could be modelled in real-time environment as a function of independent drilling variables such as weight on bit, rotation speed of the string, drilling fluid weight, and formation characteristics. The ability to have the drilling rate of penetration with respect to depth characteristically with certain parameters for specific formations on real-time basis could bring new insights to the nature of drilling optimization studies. Any significant departure of the actual rate of penetration from the predicted rate of penetration trend could have important indications which could be detected beforehand in real-time. The study has also achieved one of its objectives, giving the optimized independent drilling parameters found following statistical synthesis.

In this thesis, in-situ instantaneous cutting rates of boom type, medium-weight milling type roadheaders (Mk-2B) at &Ccedil / ayirhan Coal Mine are determined by studying previous performance tests and carrying out additional underground cutting tests. Some rock properties such as uniaxial compressive strength, tensile strength, Cone Indenter hardness, Shore hardness, Schmidt hammer rebound hardness and laboratory cutting specific energies are determined by laboratory tests for the rock and coal types encountered in the drivage of roadways. The relations between the instantaneous cutting rates and the above rock characteristics and the laboratory cutting specific energies are established. The results show that instantaneous cutting rates can be best predicted using laboratory cutting specific energy which provides the highest correlation (R2 = 0.8411) as compared to other rock properties. The model developed for the medium-weight machine to predict instantaneous cutting rate is compared with those developed earlier for the light-weight and heavy-weight machines. It is determined that improvements in cutting performance with the medium-weight machines as compared to light-weight machines is achieved for the rocks requiring laboratory cutting specific energy greater than 5 MJ/m3.

Y&ouml / rg&uuml / &ccedil / village is within the close neighbourhood of the Western Lignite Corporation Y-3 panel. Although the nearest part of the mine is 1100 m and the farthest part is 2500 m from the village at present, some of the villagers complained about the ground vibration at the past. Therefore the assessment of damage risk and, if any, control and minimization of vibrations constitutes the aim and the scope of this research work. The researh work consists of monitoring of vibration, characterising of the seismic waves by full wave form analysis, and determination of magnitude and frequency of the waves from round blasting practice. Also dominant frequencies are determined, using single-hole blasting records by special software. The analyses are continued by a critical discussion and evaluation, and, proposals for new firing methods are made. The proposed firing methods are validated by further monitoring. As a result the best blasting practice was selected and offered to control and minimize the ground vibration.

In this thesis, suggestion of appropriate excavation and support systems and selection of rock mass strength parameters for the determination of these systems were carried out for the &Ccedil / ubukbeli Tunnel in Antalya. &Ccedil / ubukbeli Tunnel is a twin tube flute shaped tunnel with 1985 m length, 12 m width, 10 m height and maximum overburden thickness of 130 m. The tunnel area consists of limestone, clayey limestone, claystone, marl and siltsone. Rock mass classification systems are used for evaluation of rock mass characteristics and estimation of strength parameters. Selection of appropriate numerical method and software tool, namely Phase2, is accomplished after an extensive literature survey. The rock mass was divided into sections according to the RMR, Q, NATM and GSI classification systems along the tunnel and excavation and support systems were determined empirically along these sections. Thereafter, geomechanical parameters (i.e. modulus of deformation Em, Hoek-Brown material constants m and s etc.) were selected based on these classification systems. Finite element analysis was carried out as the final step of the design in order to investigate deformations and stress concentrations around the tunnel, analyze interaction of support systems with excavated rock masses and verify and check the validity of empirically determined excavation and support systems. As the result of design studies accomplished along tunnel route, B1, B2, B3 and C2 type rock classes are assumed to be faced during construction of &Ccedil / ubukbeli Tunnel and appropriate excavation and support systems are proposed for these rock classes.

This study proposes an approach for land degradation assessment for an abandoned coal mine by using geospatial information technologies. The land degradation assessment focuses on two major changes: topographical and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC). For this purpose, stereo aerial photos, Worldview-1, Landsat and ASTER images, Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) data, Global Positioning System (GPS) data, and ancillary maps were used for abandoned Ovacik surface coal mine. Volume of excavations and fillings, drainage network deviations, and slope instabilities were the investigated topographical disturbances by comparison of the Digital Elevation Models (DEM) for pre- and post-mining stages. Using aerial photos and Worldview-1 satellite image, LULC maps were prepared based on the same time period. Then areal extent and spatial pattern of the LULC change was calculated and mapped by post classification comparison method. The results of land degradation assessment show that there was a significant topographical disturbance and LULC change in the research area. Particularly, three dump areas with a total volume of 2,334,878 m3 were identified by DEM subtraction. It was found that stream network around the primary dump site shifted towards south with a maximum displacement of 60m. Slope analysis reveals that slopes higher that 60 degrees were mainly observed in excavation area with 81 percent. LULC change study showed that the forest area decreased an amount of 106,485 m2 from 1951 to 2008. However / by means of the forestation efforts in dump sites, an amount of 106,012 m2 forest land was recovered.

Overburden stripping is one of the essential activities in open-cast mines before starting the ore production. Due to the economic advantages, dragline is a widely utilized machinery in the overburden excavation. These earthmovers carry out the earthmoving process with dragging, hoisting and dumping actions of the bucket. Dragline excavator&rsquo / s efficiency is critically important, since poor performance of a dragline in the mine site directly affects the total efficiency of ore production. Therefore, productivity studies about dragline should be directed to decrease cycle time and increase payload, with avoiding catastrophic failure. In this regard, determination of stress distribution on the front-end components of dragline is meaningful to detect the external factors against dragline operation. In order to provide insight into the dragline bucket-formation interaction and stress distribution on the bucket, this research studies the simulation of horizontally moving dragline bucket where passive earth forces of the formation create resistance to the movement. Within the scope of simulation, (i) solid models of dragline bucket and the rigging mechanism were created in the Computer-Aided Drawing (CAD) environment, (ii) the model was transferred to the Finite-Element Analysis (FEA) software, (iii) two different case studies were simulated in the FEA virtual environment. One of the cases handled the stress investigation on the dragline bucket at the first interaction with the formation, while the other focused on the stress formations on a moving dragline bucket. Simulation results showed that overloading conditions occurred on bottom edges of the bucket lip for the first case, and drag hitch part and digging teeth for the second case. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to measure the effects of formation specification changes on the stress values on the bucket. The analysis showed that stress values on the bucket elements were most sensitive to internal friction angle and least sensitive to density. Consequently, this thesis study discusses stress and deformation components on the dragline bucket during the interaction with formation. Since there is not enough number of research studies in the literature about the stress investigation on a moving dragline bucket, this thesis study is expected to provide benefit to understand the basis of dragline bucket actions.

Ventilation is a critical task in underground mining operation. Lack of a good ventilation system causes accumulation of harmful gases, explosions, and even fatalities. A proper ventilation system provides adequate fresh air to miners for a safe and comfortable working environment. Fans, which provide air flow to different faces of a mine, have great impact in ventilation systems. Thus, selection of appropriate fans for a mine is the acute task. Unsuitable selection of a fan decreases safety and production rate, which increases capital and operational costs. Moreover, pitch angle of fans&rsquo / blades plays an important role in fan&rsquo / s efficiency. Therefore, selection of a fan and its pitch angle, which yields the maximum efficiency, is an emerging issue for an efficient mine ventilation. The main objective of this research study is to provide a decision making methodology for the selection of a main fan and its appropriate pitch angle for efficient mine ventilation. Nowadays, analytical hierarchy process as multi criteria decision making is used, and it yields outputs based on pairwise comparison. On the other hand, Fuzzy Logic as a soft computing method was combined with analytical hierarchy process and combined model did not yield appropriate results / because Fuzzy AHP increased uncertainty ratio in this study. However, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process might be inapplicable when it faces with vague and complex data set. Soft computing methods can be utilized for complicated situations. One of the soft computing methods is a Neuro-Fuzzy algorithm which is used in classification and DM issues. This study has two phases: i) selection of an appropriate fan using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) and ii) selection of an appropriate pitch angle using Neuro-Fuzzy algorithm and Fuzzy AHP method. This study showed that AHP can be effectively utilized for main fan selection. It performs better than Fuzzy AHP because FAHP contains more expertise and makes problems more complex for evaluating. When FAHP and Neuro-Fuzzy is compared for pitch angle selection, both methodologies yielded the same results. Therefore, utilization of Neuro-Fuzzy in situation with complicated and vague data will be applicable.

LLM / Department of Mercantile Law