Research On Stabilization Of High And Steep Slopes In Open-pit Mines Based On Three-dimensional Physical Simulation Experiments

Physical simulation experiment is a powerful method to explore influence of plastic flow,material failure and hybrid monitoring in a high and steep slope of open-pit mines composedwith discontinuous rocks.We adopted an experimental setup using a stiff modular applied static loading to fulfillvisual excavation to the slope at random depth. Searching of scientific model materials hadbeen done after constructing3D model (3.60×2.00×2.30m).The simulation experiments wereinstrumented with acoustic emission (AE) censors, and monitored by crack opticalacquirement (COA), ground penetrating radar (GPR), and close-field photogrammetry (CFP)being unequivocal mechanisms of rock destabilization in the high and steep slope.The Shuichang iron mine in Hebei province of China was taken as a prototype for large3D physical simulation experiments. The high and steep slope mainly concluded a steep slopewhose angle ranged from30to47degrees, an ore body with70-80degrees, and maximumwidth and height of the model were both800meters as well as other geological structuresunder in-situ complicated stress. For the complex situation in the study area, modelexperiments showed that slope was excavated with multi stage-parameter real monitoringunder constant boundary conditions. It also showed inner correlation between model’sdestabilization resulted from slope excavation and diverse monitoring information was clearlygotten. Although the model with large scale did not include the whole complexity found in theactual open-pit mines or even in the experimental scaled models, it was also a useful tool tostudy the mechanism of high and steep slope destabilization both qualitatively andquantitatively.On the condition without any efficient reinforcement measurements, deformation anddamage of rock masses in the experiment could be divided into three parts: that was, in thesurface plane, loosen deformation zone gradually expanded to the bottom. Also a large scalearea would exist local destabilization caused rock twist obviously. Most important of all,landslide happened on bottom of model due to repeated distribution of tensile zones.