Research

Why Research with Wits Mining?
Recent Research Involvement
Enquiries

Why Research with Wits Mining ?

• Highly qualified and motivated staff
  • Personnel at Wits possess specific areas of expertise and are trained in research methodology.
  • Staff understand the Southern African mining environment.
• Cost effectiveness
  • Research bursaries cost less than salaries of engineers employed at research institutions.
  • Postgraduate students are required to complete research tasks within prescribed time limits in order to graduate.
• Focused research
  • Staff are encouraged to develop their areas of expertise.
  • Involvement with industry ensures that staff are aware of pertinent issues.
• Modern facilities
  • First class resources enable Wits Mining to carry out fundamental research.
  • Continual upgrading of facilities ensures that Wits Mining remains in the forefront of technology.
• Flexibility
  • Research programmes are constructed to meet the needs, schedules and budgets of clients.

Recent Research Involvement

PhD

• Determining the optimal rent for South African mineral resources.
• Shaped charges in mining.
• A geostatistical evaluation on the impact of mining on coal qualities and power plant performance with particular reference to emission levels.
• The analysis of the mine call factor in gold mining with specific reference to Western Holdings Mine.
• An investigation into the effects of adjacent mines and fault character upon the stability of a fault and its related seismic behavior.
• An investigation into the limitation development and morphology of fracturing ahead of tunnel faces in highly depressed rock in South African gold mines.
• Investigation of coal damage during blasting in open cast mining.
• Identification of inelastic deformation mechanisms around deep level mining stopes and their application to improvement in mining.
• An integrated environmental impact assessment of mining in the Zambian Copperbelt.
• Application of risk analysis.
• A mineral economic study into quarry closure in the Durban metropolitan area.
• An investigation into the behavior of Merensk and ug2 pillars in order to develop rock-engineering criteria for the design of mining layouts at present and future depths at Impala Platinum Mines.
• The future development of the mining engineering profession in South Africa.
• The application of non-linear geostatistical techniques to skewed data sets with particular attention to disjunctive kriging using isofactorial models based on guassion and non guassion distribution.
• Investigation into the explosive effect on rock for designing preconditioning blast in deep level gold mines.
• Environmental legislation and South Africa's coal reserves.

MSc

• Cost effective strategies for dust control in an open cast coal mine.
• Application of geostatical ore reserve evaluation techniques to optimise valuation of mining blocks at Beatrix Mine.
• A policy framework to promote small-scale mining in South Africa.
• A comparative coal mining method-productivity and accounting analysis.
• Geostatistics.
• Dry drilling kimberlite ore bodies.
• Assessment of applicability of current minerals act, legislation pertaining to the prevention of rock related accidents occurring at metalliferous mines.
• The use of direct reduced iron (dri) and other substitutes of scrap for the production of steel.
• The rock mass behavior of the strata associated with the ventersdorp contact reef & the implications for the design of support systems.
• Holistic approach to stope support measurement in the South African gold mining industry.
• Geostatistical evaluation of ore reserves.
• Determination of mode 1 fracture toughness of the brittle rock types encountered in the South African environment.
• Economic feasibility of a deep level mine.
• Determination of pillar strength from kamoto room and pillar collapse by numerical approach.
• An optimal ore reserve management system for Northam Platinum Limited.
• The evaluation and design of tunnel support by means of non-linear improving.
• Study of the behavior of strike stabilising pillars with a view to improving their design criteria for mining at great depths.
• Management of underground horizontal transport.
• An optimum mining method for Finsch Diamond Mine.
• Rock mechanics considerations for the application of sequential grid mining methods at great depths.
• The financial viability of the scattered mining above 23 level on Leeudoorn Gold Mine, a division of Kloof Gold Mining Company Limited.
• Design of yield pillars in collieries.
• Gold sector reform in Turkey.
• Application of GIS to a South African gold mine.
• The coloured gemstone industries in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
• Seismic monitoring of fault slip behavior and adjacent pillar mining in a deep level gold mine.
• Hangingwall stability and support requirements for panels of shallow tabular underground mines.
• Development and implementation of a strategy to extract gold, at shallow depth in a geologically disturbed area by trackless mining methods.
• The physical and numerical modeling of fracture growth in underground excavations.

Enquiries

All correspondence and enquiries relating to research should be addressed to the relevant staff members or:
School of Mining Engineering
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Private Bag 3
2050 WITS
Tel: 27 11 717-7403
Fax: 27 11 339-8295