| Article ID: | iaor1989232 |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Volume: | 38 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page Number: | 56 |
| End Page Number: | 62 |
| Publication Date: | Jan 1989 |
| Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
| Authors: | Gershon Mark E., Murphy Federic, H. |
| Keywords: | programming: dynamic |
In planning a mine with layered deposits one must decide the ultimate disposition of the material to be mined. Some material will be mined for processing as ore and some will be discarded as waste. Mining equipment can remove the layers of waste and ore separately. There are, however, minimum widths for waste and ore cuts because of the way the equipment is designed and operated. Thus, decisions on the disposition of any given depth interval depend on its ore quality as well as that of neighboring intervals. Information on ore quality by depth is gained by drilling holes into the ore body and measuring the mineral content at periodic intervals. This paper presents a dynamic programming approach that optimizes the cuts for a single drillhole from which the ore qualities are evaluated. The authors implement a trial version to illustrate the properties of the solution, using LOTUS 123.