Simulation of Shovel-Truck Haulage Systems in Open-pit Mines by Considering Breakdown of Trucks and Crusher Capacity

Abstract

This paper presents a case study that performed simulations on shovel-truck haulage systems in an open-pit mine by considering truck's breakdown and crusher's capacity. The SSangyoung limestone open-pit mine in Korea was selected as a study area and investigated to design the simulation algorithms. The GPSS/H simulation language is used to implement the simulation algorithms as a console application(simulator). The values of input parameters for simulator were measured by field investigation in the study area. The simulation results showed that 7 trucks can maximize the daily profit of haulage operations(i.e., 73,775 USD) when considers the frequency of trucks' breakdown as 1/40 hour -1 . In addition, the crusher capacity of 1300 tph is required to improve the efficiency of