Por: Jorge Lozano Fernández, Co-founder de Deep Pit Technology.

Abstract

Estimating the truck fleet needed to meet a production plan is one of the most important tasks in open pit mine planning since the material to be mined from the mine must be transported to different destinations at the lowest possible cost and with the highest safety standards. 

The fleet estimation derives in capital costs that the mining company must incur in order to meet its production objectives, so it is vital to have a correct estimation.

Traditional methodologies used for truck estimation do not take into account an adequate mathematical basis and use constant operating parameters, which means that the results do not have mathematical support to be the best estimate.

Given the above, in this paper we will show and develop a mathematical model that will represent the dynamic behavior of a transportation system by obtaining the fundamental equation of mining dynamic systems. Also, we will validate the mathematical results with the construction of two simulation models.