Perturbations arising from mining operations significantly affect the stability of rock masses, and the influences have aggerated with the rapid increase of mining-operation depths in recent years. The subsurface geological structures with major discontinuities are subject to seismic hazards caused by the shear slip behaviors of rock masses. To identify the shear slip regime of discontinuities and calculate seismic moment and seismic energy involved with shear slip behaviors, we used the discrete element method (DEM) to study the shear slip failure along discontinuities in an underground mine. The recorded characteristic and properties of subcontacts in DEM provided a basis for computing and visualizing the temporal and spatial distribution of seismic moment and seismic energy with mining operations. We computed the seismic energy and seismic moment using the numerical modeling method and the analytic method. We summarized that quantifying seismic potential using DEM can greatly facilitate the investigation of instability of geological discontinuities and thereby help estimate the potential of seismic hazards.
Full-text paper:
Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (2023) 40:405–420, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-023-00730-4
