Hindustan Zinc Ltd.
Online published on 12 January, 2016.
Ever tightening economy is forcing open pit mine operations to increase their working depth, steepen the slopes, etc. so as to maximize the mineral extraction at optimum cost. These changed parameters call for more vigorous and better monitoring of the slopes viz. continuous, accurate, etc. Conventional monitoring systems by prisms, etc. have their own inherent limitations and fortunately digital era offers many types of advanced techniques.
Slope monitoring market currently offers two types of Radar technologies- Real Aperture Radar (RAR), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), etc. Advanced countries like Australia, Canada, etchave been using these products since a long time. India has also woken up and started using this technology but only on miniscule scale. Rampura Agucha mine (RAM) has privilege to use first Radar in India. Now increasingly Miners like Coal, Iron, Limestones, etc are in process of procuring Radars. The current paper is presented to share our experiences of using Radar technologies for monitoring India's deepest open pit for last 6 years.
