This dissertation consists of three papers; the first is published in European Journal of Operational Research, the second is nearing submission to it Optimization and Engineering, and the third is nearing submission to International Journal of Mining, Reclamation and Environment. These papers apply operations research techniques to open pit mine production scheduling with stockpiling (OPMPS+S). The first paper, "Linear Models for Stockpiling in Open-pit Mine Production Scheduling Problems," reviews existing models to solve OPMPS+S and shows that a nonlinear-integer model provides an exact solution but is intractable even for medium-size data sets. Then, we present an approximation to that nonlinear-integer model, solve the nonli

Determination of slope angle is one of the most important parameters in open pit mine design. With low slope angles, stripping is considerably increased. On the other hand, selection of high slope angles may reduce safety and causes failure. Therefore, to prevent slope failure and high stripping, a compromise is necessary to select an optimum slope angle. There are several methods of analyzing the stability of open pit slopes such as limit equilibrium methods, empirical methods and numerical methods. In this paper, FLAC software has been applied to determine the overall slope angles in the different parts of Sungun copper mine. For analyzing the slope, five vertical sections with a proper coverage of all parts of the mine, were considered.

Determination of slope angle is one of the important parameters in designing open pits. Selection of high slope angle may reduce safety and cause slope failure. On the other hand, with low slope angle, stripping ratio is increased considerably. Therefore, preventing failure and excessive stripping, a compromise is necessary to choose an optimum angle for pit slope. There are several methods for analyzing stability of open pit slopes such as limit equilibrium methods, physical modeling and numerical simulation. In this paper, a relative critical section of Songun copper mine in which geo-mechanical characteristics of constituents rocks are low, has been selected and analyzed with the help of numerical method (software FLAC). In the static lo

Determination of slope angle is one of the important parameters in designing open pits. With low slope angle, stripping of waste is increased considerably. On the other hand, selection of high slope angle may reduce safety and cause slope failure. Therefore, preventing failure and over stripping, a compromise is necessary to choose an optimum angle for slope. There are several methods for analyzing stability of open pit slopes such as limit equilibrium methods and numerical methods. In this paper, software FLAC SLOPE has been utilized to analyze the most critical section of Sungun open pit mine. For the section having 28.5 degrees a safety factor of 1.41 has been computed.

Stockpiles are a crucial part of mine planning. However, they are often ignored in longterm planning due to the difficulty of correctly evaluating their impact in mine scheduling. This difficulty arises mainly because materials of different grades are mixed in a stockpile, and the final grade of the material leaving the stockpile is a complex non-linear function of the material inside the stockpile. In practice, computational software uses different (usually linear) approximations for estimating this grade, but it is not clear how good these approximations are. In this paper, we discuss different optimization models to approximate the real impact of a stockpile on long-term mine planning. We discuss the properties of these models and compar

It is of a high importance to introduce intelligent systems for estimation and optimization of blasting-induced ground vibration because it is one the most unwanted phenomena of blasting and it can damage surrounding structures. Hence, in this paper, estimation and minimization of blast-induced peak particle velocity (PPV) were conducted in two separate phases, namely prediction and optimization. In the prediction phase, an artificial neural network (ANN) model was developed to forecast PPV using as model inputs burden, spacing, distance from blast face, and charge per delay. The results of prediction phase showed that the ANN model, with coefficient of determinations of 0.938 and 0.977 for training and testing stages, respectively, can pro