In this paper, a new concept for final pit shape in open pit design, Best Positive Inverted Truncated Cone (BPITC) algorithm, is presented for feasibility study and basic scheduling. Five mineral deposit models were used for eventual surface mine design optimization. Initially, geological reserve models were simulated by the utilization of GSLIB using randomly and regularly spaced drill hole data. Effects of varying anisotropy on the obtained metal quantities in reserves were also investigated. The BPITC was successfully applied to 100-times simulated deposit data set using Geostatistical simulation code GSLIB. The optimization results by BPITC were compared with those obtained by Positive Moving Cone (PMC) and Dynamic Cone (DC) based algorithms for the same mineral deposit models. The obtained results indicate that BPITC is superior to all the other optimizers. Concequently, the frequency distribution curves of profits and pit incremental feature by BPITC give effective information on mineral project decision-making and mining sequencing respectively.
The conclusions from this study are summarized as follows:
1. It was proved that for any type of deposit, the usage of correct anisotropic factors used in GSLIB lead to correct evaluation of reserves.
2. All the profits / benefits computed for all the five model deposits show that a newly developed scheme named as BPITC can always indicate optimal solutions for final pit designs.
3. Conclusively, the frequency distribution curves of profits and pit incremental feature by BPITC give effective information on mineral project decision-making and mining sequencing, respectively.
