Underground check survey

The wellbeing of the mine and underground workers directly rely on the accuracy of wall stations that controls the workings on the mine. Some of the daily responsibilities of a mine surveyor comprise of staking out construction lines to control the direction and gradient of development drives. When there is deviation in the direction and gradient of construction lines in relation to the design it can lead to damage to infrastructure within the mine that causes problems such as re-development or altering designs which are expensive. This is why it is significant high order check surveys are undertaken to follow up advancing capital development as a means to verify the quality of existing wall stations and provide accurate control to further advance into the mine. The objective of the proposed research is to perform a high order control survey and adjust the observations of the traverse using a least squares adjustment incompliance with ICSM Class 'D'. Variables of the network will be statistically assessed and important considerations in the check survey will be identified to educate and render the importance of check surveying. Slope distance, direction and vertical angles were analysed to assess the quality of the check survey. It was observed that the greatest standardised residuals were located at the start and end of the survey. The assumption is that the traverse is closing onto another fixed control point which will lead to variation. Integrity of the original fixed control points was questioned as the fixed stations were verified in a check survey three years ago. Over three years wall stations are expected to move due to the nature of the mine. The absolute and relative error ellipses were analyse at a 95% confidence interval. It was observed that there was an azimuth deficiency in the Eastern direction which was caused by the orientation of the fixed control. The relative ellipses semi-major axis did not exceed the limitation of 50mm with the greatest semi-major axis being 27mm. The dissertation is to help mine surveyors understand the process of check surveys and show the importance of regularly performing high order controls surveys. While rendering the possible issues that can affect accuracy and quality when completing an underground check survey