1.     Introduction

This tutorial introduces some of the basic features of IMAT for modeling underground mine excavations. The objective of this tutorial is to analyze elastic stresses around drifts and stopes. For this purpose, a multi-stage model is created, which includes the following stages:

• Initial condition
• Excavation of two drifts sequentially
• Excavation of two stopes sequentially

This tutorial demonstrates how to plot elastic stress contours and monitor stress changes at a specific point near the excavations at different mining stages.

This tutorial provides a detailed procedure for constructing the mine model, which includes the following steps:

• Importing mine geometry into IMAT
• Assigning in-situ stresses
• Creating the model domain, assigning boundary conditions and zone size
• Building the model grid
• Assigning material properties
• Solving the model
• Creating cut planes to display stress contours
• Creating a stress change plot for a point near the excavations