Norilsk Nickel’s Polar Division, Norilsk, Russia:

M. P. Sergunin, Head of Department for Geotechnical Supervision of Mining at the Center for Geodynamic Safety, SerguninMP@nornik.ru
T. P. Darbinyan, Director of Mining Practice Department

The article describes the method of collecting large bulk of data on rock mass jointing in the Talnakh and Oktyabrsky deposits developed by the Polar Division of Norilsk Nickel. The method is based on processing of 3D triangulation faulting frames constructed in the geoinformation environment Micromine. This trend is selected because of the current storage of the majority of geological and surveying data collected by Norilsk Nickel’s Polar Division in geoinformation packages in the form of 3D models; for this reason, the correct retrieval of the data for the interpretation and analysis is of the current concern. Furthermore, the model data amount and quality is sufficient for the more exact solution of the main geotechnical problems since the final geological models use data obtained from the exploration beginning and down to recent times; moreover the geological models are promptly updated as new data are acquired. The export of the data on jointing from the geological models is implemented automatically in view of the large quantity of computational operations. To this effect, the dedicated program is written in the Python language to extract the required information from the triangulation frames and to mark it with auxiliary data. All in all, processing of the tectonic faulting frames produced the array composed of more than 206 thousand records. Later on, the information was used to illustrate the variation in rock mass jointing in the Talnakh and Oktyabrsky deposits with depth. The analysis was carried out after depth-wise filtration of the initial data in the special Rocscience Dips software representing the data on jointing in the form of standard stereographic projections. Finally, the article offers some case-studies on application of the available data on rock mass jointing to solving specific geotechnical problems.

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