Development of dragline excavation model for operation planning

Draglines are gigantic excavators commonly used to remove overburden that sits above a target mineral reserve in surface mining. Their operational efficiency is greatly affected by the sequence of positions where the dragline operates and the removal and disposal of material at each position. In this paper, we develop two dragline excavation models that can be used for planning and optimizing dragline operations. The first of these models is developed using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) while the second model is developed using a geometric approach. These models are developed for different applications in dragline operation planning. Comparison is made between these models and their advantages and limitations are identified