Non-ACG Publications

Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design

Many of the uncertainties surrounding the development of a large open pit mine have now been overcome with the publication of the 496 page ‘Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design’.

The publication is the result of four years of effort and support from a group of 12 mining companies representing the majority of the world’s production of diamonds and base metals.

Up until now, the only handbook of this type available to open pit mine slope design practitioners, including engineering geologists, geotechnical engineers, mining engineers, civil engineers and mine managers, has been the ‘CANMET manual’ last published in 1977.

The new Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design was officially released at the Slope Stability conference in Santiago, Chile, 9 November 2009. It is a direct outcome of the ‘Large Open Pit’ research project and comprises 14 chapters that follow the life of mine sequence from project development to closure.

CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering’s Dr John Read is one of two editors and has also authored a number of chapters in the book. Dr Read has over 40 years of experience as a practitioner and consultant in the mining industry, with special interests and expertise in rock slope stability and open pit mine design and investigation tasks in Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Canada, South Africa and Zambia.

He says that each chapter is written by an industry practitioner with specific experience in the topic being described. “The purpose of the book is to be a new generation guideline that links innovative mining geomechanics research with best practice”, he said. “The book outlines for today’s practitioners what works best in different situations and why, what doesn’t work and why not, and what is the best approach to satisfy best practice in a range of situations.”

Guidelines for Open Pit Slope Design is available from CSIRO publishing for AUD195.