Mine Work

Mine Work 

work done to make and maintain mining excavations that explore for and extract mineral products from the earth.

Mine work is divided into open-pit work, which is done under the open sky; underground work, which is done in the earth’s interior; and underwater work.

Mine work is further subdivided by the method of work and means used into machine work (the most common, done by mining machinery and equipment); explosive work (the main type uses explosive charges placed in boreholes, blast-holes, or previous excavations); hydraulic; geotechnological (extracting mineral products by sublimation, leaching, dissolving, and evaporation); drilling (used for extracting petroleum, combustible gases, brines, and mineral solutions through boreholes made to depths of several thousand m); and thermal (rarely used, for prospecting work in permafrost regions).

Mine work is also subdivided by production function into stripping a deposit; preparatory work (to prepare the stripped part of the deposit for working—dividing it into cutting fields or blocks by means of mining excavations that ensure transportation of rocks, materials, and equipment and movement of people); cutting work (to divide the cutting fields or blocks into cutting sectors by means of cut excavations); and cleaning or extraction work (to extract the mineral products).

V. A. BOIARSKII