Category Archives: Maintenance

These articles cover maintenance issues for haul roads.

Integrated Approach to Mine Haul Road Design and Management

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.

For further details, see the book:

Mining Haul Roads: Theory and Practice
1st Edition
Roger Thompson, Rodrigo Peroni, Alex T. Visser

CRC Press
Published December 11, 2018
Reference – 294 Pages
ISBN 9781138589629
CAT# K386669

More general details of the approach are available here as a slideshow.

Maintenance Management Systems and Analysis

Routine road maintenance using grader to remove road defect

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).

For further details, see the book:

Mining Haul Roads: Theory and Practice
1st Edition
Roger Thompson, Rodrigo Peroni, Alex T. Visser

CRC Press
Published December 11, 2018
Reference – 294 Pages
ISBN 9781138589629
CAT# K386669

Further technical background is available here.

 

References: Mine Haul Road Maintenance and Management

Maintenance Grader with Toothed Blade

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.