Guidlines For Use of The Scaled Span Method For Surface Crown Pillar Stability Assessment
Guidlines For Use of The Scaled Span Method For Surface Crown Pillar Stability Assessment
Stability Assessment
T.G. Carter
Golder Associates, Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
ABSTRACT: Reliably establishing the competence and adequacy of the rock cover that will remain in place
above a near-surface excavation is key to preventing cave-ins and ensuring surface infrastructure stability
above mine workings or civil tunnels. The Scaled Span approach, developed in the late 1980s, provides an
effective means for empirically sizing a rock crown pillar over a near-surface excavation based on precedent
experience. Despite the fact that this approach has been widely used worldwide for now well over twenty
years, inadvertent collapses through to surface still continue to occur both of mine workings and civil tunnels.
Disturbingly, a number of recent cave-ins have developed, again due largely to lack of adequate
understanding of crown stability, commonly because of limited awareness of the lessons that can be learnt
from the precedent experience embodied in the Scaled Span methodology. Citing examples from the now well
over 500 cases with over 70 failure records of crown collapses, this current paper examines some of these
failures as background to explaining the empirical Scaled Span methodology for aiding crown pillar design.
1 INTRODUCTION
Problems from collapses of near-surface workings
have plagued mining operations for years, not just at
remote mine sites but often also in urban settings,
Figure 1. Civil tunnel collapses to surface are also
not uncommon in urban areas. Reliably establishing
the competence and adequacy of the rock cover that
will remain in place above a near-surface excavation
is key to preventing cave-ins and ensuring stability
of any infrastructure above underground workings.
Assessing the risk for whether or not any nearsurface mine opening or civil tunnel might collapse
and break through to impact surface infrastructure is
however challenging; while defining an appropriate
minimum rock crown cover thickness that should be
left above a mined opening is a particularly difficult
design task. An attempt to address such problems in
a mining context, more than 20 years ago led to the
development of the Scaled Span empirical design
guidelines for surface crown pillar rock thickness
dimensioning discussed in this paper.
The initial guidelines, (Golder Associates, 1990,
Carter, 1992, and Carter and Miller, 1995), which
were mainly developed looking at steeply dipping
orebody geometries, were targeted at helping mining
engineers define potential collapse risk levels for
new or abandoned mined openings, and also to help
with establishing critical crown pillar dimensions for
any proposed new mine designs.
Since its original development, based on a case
record set of over 200 near-surface openings with 30
failure cases, (Golder, 1990), two minor, but quite
significant improvements have been implemented to
the methodology to aid practitioners in their use of
1
Rock Mass
Conditions
- Topography
- Presence or absence of water body
- Thickness, Material Properties
- Stratigraphy
- Groundwater regime
- Bedrock/overburden interface
topography
- General geological regime
- Ore zone dip
- Rock types and classification
characteristics - Hangingwall
- Footwall
- Ore zone in crown
pillar
- Structural controls
Jointing, faulting, cleavage, etc.
- Geometry of crown pillar and upper
openings, width, thickness, stope spans,
filling if present, support methods if
present
- Other factors
- available data on stresses
- complicating geometry e.g.
multiple ore zones, etc.
(2)
CS S
T 1 S R 1 0.4 cos
0.5
(3)
Figure 13. The Original Scaled Span Chart, showing stable and failed case records plotted as Scaled Spans versus Rock Quality
13
(4)
sin
S Eff . S L H cos
tan
L
(5)
(6)
16(m n + s c )
3 m2 c
and where
m and s can be defined from GSI, using the well
known Hoek-Brown regression relationships,
mb/mi = exp{( GSI 100 ) / ( 28 14D )} and
s = exp{( GSI 100 ) / ( 9 3D )} where
D is the disturbance factor as listed in Table 2.
c and mi are respectively the uniaxial
compressive strength and the Hoek-Brown
intact material constant appropriate for the
hangingwall rockmass, as determined from
laboratory testing, or estimated from Table 3,
and
n is an estimate of the prevailing normal stress
that would be acting across the break-line (this
can be initially calculated using the vertical
depth to the bottom of the stope and a typical
minimum break-line angle of 60 ~ equivalent
to the Rankine wedge failure angle 45+/2),
i.e.,,
n
3
H
2
(9)
D-Factor
Underground
Excavations
(confined
conditions)
Open Cuts and
Open Pits
(de-stressed
conditions)
Disturbance Characteristics
0.5
0.8
0.7
1
0.7
1
Igneous
Metamorphic
125-250
Intrusive
Felsic
Coarse
(Granite)
Medium
(GranodioriteDiorite)
Mafic
100-300
85-350
Medium,
amorphous
(Amphibolite)
Coarse
(Gabbromember of
ophiolites)
75-350
Fine,
amorphous
(Homfels,
Quartzite)
50-200
Bended/
Gneissose
(Biotitic Gneiss)
Folliated
(Phyllite, Slate)
20-60
Schistose
(Schist)
10-50
Mylonitized
(Sericitic Schist,
Mylonite)
Sedimentary
mi
31-33
Granular
Texture
(Granulites,
Quartz Gneiss)
30-100
Extrusive
(Volcanic)
28-30
Mafic
(Basalt)
Intermediate
(Andesite)
Felsic
(Rhyolite)
Coarse
(Conglomerate-not
clayey)
25-27
Medium
(Dolerite /
Diabase
member of
ophiolites)
Medium quartz
cemented
(Sandstone/
Sandstone members
of flysch or
molasse/greywacke)
17-20
Fine
(Serpentinitemember of
ophiolites)
Medium
carbonates
(Limestone)
13-16
Fine, (clastics)
(Siltstone/ Siltstone
members of flysch or
molasse/tuff)
Fine, Calc-rock
(Chalk/marl)
Ultrafine
(Claystone,
Mudstone / sheared
Siltstone, Shale
members of flysch)
10-12
7-9
4-6
(9)
s s [(1 s ) f T ] /( 4 a * 1)
(10)
where a* varies from 0.5 when completely rocklike, and behaviour is Hoek-Brown through to 1.0
when behaviour is Mohr Coulomb. The expression
for a* and for the transition function, fT updated to
better match ISRM strength grades for the R0 / R1
boundary, as plotted in Figure 15, are as follows:
(11)
a a (1 a ) f
T
1 , ci 1 .0 MPa
f T ci
2
1 / ci , ci 1 .0 MPa
(12)
2.9Fc 1
Pf 1 erf
(13)
Table 4 Acceptable Risk Exposure Guidelines - Comparative Significance of Crown Pillar Failure
(from Carter et al., 2008, modified from Carter & Miller, 1995)
0.001
100
EXTREMELY
POOR
VERY POOR
0.01
POOR
0.1
GOOD
FAIR
VERY
GOOD
10
EXTREMELY
GOOD
EXCEP.
GOOD
100
1000
95%
85%
LEGEND
ORE FAILURE CASES
HW/FW FAILURE
ORE STABLE
HW/FW STABLE
50%
15%
CAVING
5%
10
0.5%
Sc=3.58Q0.44
99.5%
90%
80%
50%
20%
10%
0.5%
STABLE
0.1
0
10
VERY POOR
20
30
POOR
40
50
60
FAIR
70
GOOD
80
90
VERY GOOD
Figure 16. Updated Scaled Span Chart with Probability of Failure Contour Intervals
18
100
(15)
Figure 17. Example application from Carter and Miller, 1995 of method for considering variability in rockmass quality as a
means to improve understanding of changes in probability of failure for a surface crown pillar of known geometry
20
FC
(16)
Figure 20. Example use of Scaled Span Chart with Probability of Failure Classes for assessing stability state for variable
geometry and variable rock quality (as suggested by Richards, 2013, based on concepts outlined in Figure 17)
22
Figure 21. Rockmass Quality Controls on Time for Crown Pillar Collapse
as compared with Stand-up Time estimates from Tunnel Cases (from Carter and Miller, 1996)
24
Bulking Factor
Range
Degradable,
Weathering Susceptible,
Readily broken down;
Low LA Abrasions and
Low Slake Durabilities
Non-degradable,
competent, durable, hard
rock; High Los Angeles
Abrasions and
High Slake Durabilities
Low to
Moderate
10% to 30%
Moderate to
High
30% to 50%
(17)
8.1 Background
In many mining and civil engineering projects,
qualitative, and in some cases quantitative risk
assessments are becoming more commonly applied
in order to attempt to rank and prioritize measures to
deal with identified risks. The results of Scaled
Span assessments are often used in these situations
as part of decision matrices for hazard ranking
In discussions related to such risk assessments the
question often arises as to which Stability Class
included on Table 4 corresponds to the state when
risks are synonymous with the publics appreciation
of being as low as reasonably possible. (ALARP).
Questions also arise regarding definition of
acceptability and Expected Service Life, as
longevity, for closure, is a key issue.
28
32
Just, G.D. and Free, G.D. 1971. The Gravity Flow of Material
in the Sublevel Caving Mining System. Proc. of the First
Australian-New Zealand Conference on Geomechanics,
Melbourne, p. 88-97.
33
Hong
Kong,
34