By Keith Taylor, Sr. Geotechnical Engineer, Freeport-McMoRan
The mining industry has long recognized the importance of slope stability as it pertains to safely extracting metal and ore from open pits. Many open pits mines use advanced monitoring techniques to detect small movements in the highwall and provide operators with ample warning prior to instability. The fundamentals of slope design, when combined with careful blasting and mining practices, can be used to increase the angle of the highwall. This increases the value of the resource by reducing stripping, increasing accessible ore, or some economic combination of the two. This session will review the combination of slope design, slope monitoring, blasting, mining, and management being used to safely increase the value of Freeport’s open pit mines.