The operating performance of a mine haul road can be subdivided into four distinct design components, and when designing and constructing a haul road for optimal performance, these design components are best addressed using an integrated approach. If one design component is deficient, the other components may not work to their maximum potential and road performance is often compromised. This will most often be seen as ‘maintenance intensive’ or high rolling resistance roads, translating to increased equipment operating, downtime and repair costs. The cure, however, is not necessarily just ‘more frequent maintenance’; no amount of maintenance will fix a poorly-designed road.
Design and construction costs for the majority of haul roads represent only a small proportion of the total operating and road maintenance costs. The use of an appropriate road maintenance management strategy has the potential to generate significant cost savings – particularly in the light of increases in rolling resistance due to the interactive effects of traffic volume and wearing course deterioration.
With large trucks being used, it is inevitable that some deterioration or damage to the road will occur, and this damage needs to be regularly fixed. The better the road is built, the slower the rate of deterioration and thus the less maintenance required. A poor road, however, will quickly deteriorate and will need very frequent maintenance (often to the detriment of other roads in the network).
These references cover general issues related to mine haul road maintenance and management.
Bennett, F.L. 1994. Gravel Roadway Maintenance in Cold Regions. Institute if Northern engineering, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska. 160pp
Collins, J. L. Fytas, K. and Singhal, R. K. 1986. Design, Construction and Maintenance of Surface Mine Haulage Roads. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Geotechnical Stability in Surface Mining, Calgary, Alberta. Pp 39-49
Davey, T. and McLeod, M. 2002. Assessing Haul Road Condition using Application Severity Analysis (ASA) – Version 8, 16 October, Cat Global Mining Asia Pacific
Deslandes, J.V. and Dickerson, A.W. 1989. A New Concept for Mine Haul Route Surface Maintenance. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Off Highway Haulage in Surface Mines. Edmonton, Alberta. Pp 247-254
Kaufman, W.W. and Ault, J.C. 1977. The design of surface mine haul roads a manual. USDOI Information circular 8758.
Kolada, R. J. 1989. The Analysis of Mine Haulage Economics using Direct Rolling Resistance Measurements. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Off Highway Haulage in Surface Mines .Edmonton, Alberta. Pp 239-246
Long, G. 1968. Road and property maintenance. Surface Mining, ed. Pfleider, E. P., Seeley W Mudd Series, American Institution of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, Inc, New York, NY., pp678-682.
Miller R.E., Thompson R.J. and Lowe N.T. 2004. A GPS-based system for minimizing jolts to heavy equipment operators. Society of Automotive Engineering, SAE Transactions, Journal of Commercial Vehicles, SAE 2004-01-2726, ISBN 0-7680-1641-X, pp850-855.
Tannant, D. and Regensburg, B. 2001. Guidelines for mine haul road design. School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Thompson, R.J. 1996. The design and maintenance of surface mine haul roads. PhD Thesis, University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Thompson, R.J and Visser, A.T. 1999. Management of unpaved road networks on opencast mines. Transportation Research Record (TRR) 1652, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C.
Thompson R.J. and Visser A.T. 2003. Mine haul road maintenance management systems. Jnl. of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 103:5, May/June.
Articles, Papers, Reports and Software for Mine Haul Road Design
