Coupling Geomechanical and Gravity Flow Models to Obtain More Representative Flow Simulations and Air‐Gap Risk Identification in Caving Mining

The extraction and propagation of caving are complex phenomena involving the breaking of the rock mass, the formation of a column of broken material, and the extraction from the column base. Geomechanical modeling in cave mining commonly uses approaches to model the rock mass as a continuous material, while discontinuous modeling is frequently used for the column of broken material. However, it remains complex to include all mechanisms in a single model. Therefore, to achieve a better representation of ore breakage and extraction in caving mining, this work couples FLAC3D, a continuous finite volume tool, with FlowSim, a discrete tool based on cellular automata, to determine the air gap volume. The methodology first defines the height of caving propagation and the cave back with a tool that models solid rock mass in a continuous manner, which are used to constrain the cellular automata tool that simulates the flow of broken material. The results show that unidirectional FLAC3D‐FlowSim coupling reproduces the generation of cave backs and air gaps in the propagation of caving, rendering the methodology valuable for preliminary estimation of air volumes over fragmented material and the generation of supportive data to control the caving process.