Investigation and Stability Assessment of Three Sill Pillar Recovery Schemes in a Hard Rock Mine

In Canada, many mines have adopted the sublevel stoping method, such a blasthole stoping (BHS), to extract steeply deposited minerals. Sill pillars are usually kept in place in this mining method to support the weight of the overburden in underground mining. To prolong the mine’s life, sill pillars will be recovered, and sill pillar recovery could cause failures, fatality, and equipment loss in the stopes. In this paper, three sill pillar recovery schemes—SBS, SS1, and SS2—were proposed and conducted to assess the feasibility of recovering two sill pillars in a hard rock mine by developing a full-sized three-dimensional (3D) analysis model employing the finite element method (FEM). The numerical model was calibrated by comparing the model computed ground settlement with the in situ monitored ground settlement data. The rockburst tendency of the stope accesses caused by the sill pillar recovery was assessed by employing the tangential stress (Ts) criterion and burst potential index (BPI) criterion. All three proposed sill pillar recovery schemes were feasible and safe to recover the sill pillars in this hard rock mine, and the scheme SBS was the optimum one among the three schemes.