Geomotion have been commissioned to supply and install geotechnical instrumentation for the Waste Fines Storage Facility Project at Hope Downs 4 DSP Pit. 

The Hope Downs 4 (HD4) mine is an iron ore mine located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, 100 kilometres northwest of Newman. The mine is partly owned and operated by Rio Tinto Iron Ore (RTIO) and is one of twelve iron ore mines the company operates in the Pilbara.
 
UON’s client RTIO required an increase in capacity to the mining site’s current waste fines facilities, necessary to continue plant operations. The works involved supply, install and construct the piping and waste fines facilities infrastructure including geotechnical monitoring equipment, relocation of existing infrastructure inclusive of the removal and replacement of HV and fibre optic cable, pumping equipment and an extension to the piping facilities inclusive of trenching earthworks.

The geotechnical monitoring system used the proven Vibrating Wire (VW) Technology on Piezometers and Pressure Cells running below ground conduit excavation along the pit bench attached to Load Sensing VW Node Data Loggers inside two Terminal Boxes located at the pit surface for remote monitoring.
 
The VW Piezometers were installed in 20L buckets filled with saturated waste fines slurry to measure and monitor pore water pressures. The VW Pressure Cells were installed on 500x200mm blinding concrete plinths, backfilled with waste fines, to determine the distribution, magnitude and directions of total soil pressure. The design will be used to monitor and control placement of fill and essentially provide adequate warning of excess soil pressures into the operational life of the pit structure.

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