Most mine operations especially the underground ones are susceptible to flooding. The nature of disruption depends on the mine location and deposit type. Risk of uncontrollable mine flooding may not necessarily correlate with level of regional precipitation and depends on geological structure, water horizon location, stratigraphy, mining method, seismic activity, and other factors.
Although unfortunate events of underground mine flooding are quite common in mining practice there are no known engineering simulation decision support systems specially designed for what-if scenario types of analysis.
The MF Analyzer suggests variant analysis for possible flooding scenarios and provides critically important mechanisms for defining optimal or at least acceptable solutions in a difficult disastrous situation where time matters, and wrong decision may cost human lives, environmental risks and hundreds of million of dollars due to following long-term liabilities and further requests for area recultivation.
Traditionally that kind of solutions are being developed in the universities or R&D scientific organizations. They rarely reach level of industrial quality and are not accessible for decision makers in situations where their availability is critical and indispensable.
The MF Analyzer is an extension to the advanced client / server on-prem or cloud-deployed digital transformation platform Mine AdvisorTM. The system is equipped with powerful 3D/4D visualization engine enhanced by augmented and mixed reality technology and includes financial / economical assessment instruments. No special hydrological, mathematical, or physical background is required from the user.
The data model is based on a topological model of an underground mine. Data model compilation mostly happens during data import (terrain and CAD data) from 3rd-party systems. The MF Analyzer suggests user-friendly UI for setting up alternative scenarios of flooding. The simulation system implements unique original flooding algorithms tested and checked at a few real mine flooding events.
The underground flooding simulator suggests two modes of flooding with gravity flow or pressure flow or their combination with additional simulation of possible dissolution of underground camera walls and corresponding change of underground mine geometry.
No analogues are known.
The MF Analyzer is also applicable for analyzing natural disastrous situations like floodings and landslides (for example flooding of u/g engineering facilities e.g., subways, sewage system, u/g storage systems)