PIT DESIGN

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OBJECTIVES
 To become familiar with Surpac’s Pit Design tools.
 To construct a pit with a ramp starting from a base.
 To calculate the volume between a designed pit and a topography.
 To generate a final surface using a designed pit and natural topography.

FILES USED
Files used in this lab exercise are found in the following folder:

C:\PIT_DESIGN.LAB\

DISCUSSION
The Pit Design module is a suite of functions that allow you to design:

 an excavation (pit) from the bottom up or the top down

 a land fill or waste dump from the top down or bottom up

 a road which requires cut and fill of topography

Benches
The Pit Design module uses normal String data to build a pit by progressively expanding
or contracting toes and crests. Benches are constructed by either expanding or
contracting closed strings, either upwards or downwards depending on where the design
is started, by a certain bench height. That is, pit design may be started on surface and
designed downward to a base, or from a base and upward to topography. Which way a
design is started depends on what data is available, the specific data involved, and the
requirements of the project.

When expanding (or contracting) closed strings to construct benches, they are done so
on a point-by-point basis at specified angles. These angles are the pit wall slope
measured from one toe to the next crest (upwards) or one crest to the next toe
(downwards). The pit wall slope is defined by the user in any of three different
ways:

Design One constant slope for the entire pit. This is used for simple pit designs.
slope

Each point in the segment to be expanded is done so at a slope angle

specified by a value in the point’s description field (D1). This is used where
Descriptions different parts of the pit perimeter require different pit wall slopes according to
geotechnical constraints.

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 Each point in the segment to be expanded is done so at a slope angle
specified by where the point lies in relation to a ‘slope string’ file. A ‘slope
string’ file consists of clockwise, closed segments defining the areas of
Slope different pit wall slopes. In the point’s description field (D1) is the value of the
Strings pit wall slope of that particular zone or area. This is used where different areas
of the pit property require different pit wall slopes according to geotechnical
constraints.

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Benches may be constructed in one of three ways:

By bench Nominate a single height by which to elevate a toe or lower a crest. The
resulting segment will be elevated or lowered by the nominated bench height.
height

Nominate a single elevation to which a toe will be elevated or a crest will be

To elevation lowered. The resulting segment will reside entirely on the same nominated
elevation.

Nominate a DTM to which a toe will be elevated or a crest will be lowered. The
To DTM resulting segment will conform to elevations determined by the nominated DTM
Surface surface.

The widths of benches are obtained by expanding crests (or contracting toes) by a
certain berm width.

Ramps
When design a pit, either from the top down or bottom up, you may choose to include a
ramp. Ramps are defined by points along their edge and by a gradient. Exits from the
ramps onto the benches may be included as part of the ramp design. Once the ramp is
defined it will automatically be designed as the pit design progresses. There are two
types of ramps:

1. Circular Ramps: Circular ramps, either clockwise or anti-clockwise follow the

perimeter or wall of the pit. Their sense (clockwise or anti-clockwise) depends on
how the pit is designed; either from the bottom upwards or from the top
downwards. Circular ramps may be edited, deleted, added at any time during
the pit design. Switchbacks are used to reverse a circular ramp’s direction.

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Anti-clockwise ramp built
from bottom upwards.

Switchback Clockwise ramp built from

bottom upwards.

CIRCULAR RAMP
2. All Cut Ramps: All Cut ramps do not follow the wall or perimeter of the pit.
Instead, they follow a pre-defined centreline. The perimeter of the pit then is
reformed to accommodate the requirements of the all cut ramp.

All-Cut ramp following a pre-defined centreline.

ALL-CUT RAMP

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ASSIGNMENT
1. Construct a pit from the base up to topography. Start with the file pit1.str. Build the pit
with 10m bench heights and 5m bench widths (berm widths), at a pit wall slope of 50°
until it reaches topography (topo1.str). Include a ramp in your pit design.
2. Create a surface (DTM) of your pit and generate a final surface using it and the
topography (topo1.str).
3. Generate a final, mined surface using your pit and the topography (topo1.str).
4. Calculate the cut volume of your designed pit.

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USEFUL TOOLBAR ICONS
PIT DESIGN
Load Slope String File
Select method of pit wall slope
New Ramp
Edit Ramp
Load DTM Surface
Display DTM Surface Offsets
Hide DTM Surface Offsets
Expand Segment by Berm Width
Expand Segment by Bench Height
Expand Segment to Elevation
Expand Segment to DTM Surface
Expand String by Berm Width
Expand String by Bench Height
Expand String to Elevation
Expand String to DTM Surface

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PROCEDURE
1. Construct a pit from the base up to topography. Start with the file pit1.str. Build
the pit with 10m bench heights and 5m bench widths (berm widths), at a pit wall
slope of 50° until it reaches topography (topo1.str). Include a ramp in your pit
design.
a. From the Navigator click and drag the file pit1.str into the viewport to open it.
This string will form the base of the pit you will create.
b. From the Mine Design menu choose Pit design, Select slope method.
c. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

d. From the Mine Design menu choose Pit design, Set slope gradient.
e. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

f. From the Mine Design menu choose Pit design, New ramp.
g. A prompting message will appear asking you to “Select the first ramp point” then
“Select the second ramp point”. Choose the sides of the ramp as in the following
diagram:

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First ramp point

Second ramp point

h. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

i. From the Mine Design menu choose Expand segment, By bench height.
j. A prompting message will appear asking you to “Select the segment to be
expanded”. Click to select the base string.
k. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

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l. Notice that the prompting text reappears giving you the chance to select another
segment to expand. Hit the ESCAPE key to exit the function.
m. From the Mine Design menu choose Expand segment, By berm width.
n. A prompting message will appear asking you to “Select the segment to be
expanded”. Click to newly expanded crest string. That is the outermost string.
o. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

p. Notice that the prompting text reappears giving you the chance to select another
segment to expand. Hit the ESCAPE key to exit the function.
q. Now you will load a surface topography so that you can build the pit to match the
surface. From the Mine Design menu, choose Pit design, Load DTM surface.
r. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

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s. From the Mine design menu, choose Pit design, Display DTM surface offsets.
t. A prompting message will appear asking you to “Select the segment to display
the DTM offsets”.
u. Click to select the outermost segment. The vertical distances from the points
around the selected segment to the surface are displayed.
v. From the Mine design menu, choose Pit design, Hide DTM surface offsets.
w. You have just built one bench. Repeat steps i. trough p. until your pit is within
20m of the surface.
x. From the Mine design menu, choose Expand segment, To DTM surface.
y. Fill the subsequent form as follows. Note that the Minimum z value and the
Maximum z value may be different from yours.

z. Notice that sometimes after expanding a segment errors or odd geometry may
form in the expanded segment, such as in the following diagram. These
geometrical problems may be easily corrected using the Edit functions.

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 These points should
be moved or deleted.

2. Create a surface (DTM) of your pit.

a. Check the layer chooser in the first toolbar to make sure the layer in which your
pit resides is the active layer:

Layer chooser

b. From the Surfaces menu, choose Create DTM from layer.

c. Apply the subsequent form:

3. Generate a final, mined surface using your pit and the topography (topo1.str).
a. From the Navigator, click and drag to open the topography DTM file (topo1.dtm)
and the DTM file of your pit.
b. From the Surfaces menu choose Clip or intersect DTM’s, Lower triangles of 2
DTM’s.

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 c. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

d. A prompting message will ask you to “Select first trisolation”. Choose one of the
2 DTM’s.
e. A second prompting message will ask you to “Select second trisolation”. Choose
the next DTM.
f. The final, mined surface will appear in the specified layer (final surface) after
some time calculating.
4. Calculate the cut volume of your designed pit.
a. In order to calculate a volume you always require 3 things: 2 surfaces and a
boundary string. In this case the boundary string will be the outermost string in
the pit. That is, calculate the volume inside of this string and between the 2
DTM’s. You, therefore, must know what number the outermost string in your pit
design is. To fin this out use the function to identify a point on that string.
Remember the string number because you’ll need it in the next step.
b. From the Volumes menu choose Cut and fill between DTM’s.
c. Fill the subsequent form as follows:

Please note that “your_pit” is the name of the pit design you’ve save from step 1.,
and string # 32 is the number of the outermost string in your pit design.

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