GEOL 106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 28: Retaining Wall, South Nation River, Ore

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering
• Course: GEOL 106
• Professor: John Hanes

Document Summary

How, exactly, do we determine the probability of failure of the slope (i. e. , ph) Use the example of an open-pit mine to explain this. For our open-pit mine problem, we will imagine that we are mining a porphyry-copper ore deposit. Goal: to mine out the granite porphyry as cheaply as possible (add diagram of porphyry-cu deposit) Vertical pit walls are possible with some types of rock. In rocks, potential failure planes are planes of weakness (also known as discontinuities) Physics of slope stability of a rock mass. Safety factor a measure of the stability of the slope. Consider a block, of weight w, sitting on a slope of angle (see diagram) Weight of block (w) = volume (v) x density (e) x acceleration due to gravity (g) Forces (n=normal force, t=tangential force): see diagram (basically you need to add a whole bunch of diagrams)