Manoj Khandelwal

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Associate Professor and Undergraduate and Postgraduate Program Coordinator of Mining Engineering at Federation University

The prediction of ground vibration is of great importance in the alleviation of the detrimental effects of blasting. Therefore, a vibration control study to minimize the harm of ground vibration and its influence on nearby structures can play an important role in the mining industry. In this paper, a dimensional analysis (DA) technique has been per...

An attempt has been made to evaluate and predict the blast-induced ground vibration and frequency by incorporating rock properties, blast design and explosive parameters using the artificial neural network (ANN) technique. A three-layer, feed-forward back-propagation neural network having 15 hidden neurons, 10 input parameters and two output parame...

The determination of index properties of rock, such as Cerchar Abrasivity Index, Shore Hardness, Protodyakonov Index and Vickers Hardness in laboratory or insitu conditions is time-consuming and requires special equipment and expertise. However, the use of P-wave technology to measure the P-wave velocity of rock is a relatively simple task because...

This paper presents an experimental-statistical study investigating the influence of five joint properties: density, filling type, angle, aperture, and roughness on the longitudinal wave velocity (LWV) of concrete samples. To achieve this, each of the five properties is categorized into distinct groups with specific intervals. Concrete samples meas...

Slope failures can have devastating consequences for both lives and property. Therefore, accurate and reliable slope stability assessments are crucial. Various methods have been developed to evaluate slope stability in terms of the factor of safety, with the Limit Equilibrium Method (LEM) being the most widely used despite its inherent limitations....

The Great Dyke of Zimbabwe is a major geological formation renowned for its rich deposits of platinum group metals. This study addresses the geological and geotechnical challenges faced during mining on the Great Dyke, focusing on the implications for hardrock pillar design. The Great Dyke's geological complexity includes diverse rock types—dunites...

Optimizing mine fan operations in underground coal mines is important for ensuring proper ventilation, enhancing safety, and improving operational efficiency. A single main ventilation fan is insufficient to meet the ventilation demands of the entire mine. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the addition of booster fans to ensure effective venti...

Given the growing concern over global warming and the critical role of carbon dioxide (CO2) in this phenomenon, the study of CO2-induced alterations in coal strength has garnered significant attention due to its implications for carbon sequestration. A large number of experiments have proved that CO2 interaction time (T), saturation pressure (P) an...

Geotechnical challenges in contemporary engineering necessitate the construction of structures on poor soils and vulnerable slopes due to limited land availability. The stability of soil slopes under seismic conditions is crucial for designing safe infrastructures. Conventional slope reinforcement techniques, such as geosynthetics, are effective bu...

With the continuous acceleration of urbanization, the problem of ground settlement induced by underground tunnel construction has received more and more widespread attention. This study addresses the challenge of predicting surface subsidence in urban tunnel construction, a critical concern in geotechnical engineering. Random forest (RF) models wer...

Bimsoil slope (Bimslope) or Soil-Rock-Mixture slopes are complex geological formations made up of geotechnically important ‘blocks’ enclosed in a finer-textured ‘matrix.’ These geomaterials possess heterogeneous properties owing to changes in the block and matrix properties that can arise from natural weathering processes or various anthropogenic a...

The accurate prediction of rock mass quality ahead of the tunnel face is crucial for optimizing tunnel construction strategies, enhancing safety, and reducing geological risks. This study developed three hybrid models using random forest (RF) optimized by moth-flame optimization (MFO), gray wolf optimizer (GWO), and Bayesian optimization (BO) algor...

The Hardgrove grindability index (HGI) is a crucial indicator for assessing the grindability of coal, and accurate prediction of HGI is essential for improving the production efficiency and economic benefits of the coal industry. This study employed six decision tree-based machine learning models to predict the HGI values of 129 coal samples, with...

Electrical Resistivity (ER) is one of the best geophysical methods for subsurface investigation, especially for geotechnical and geo-environmental studies. Being non-invasive, economical and rapid, this method is highly preferable to geotechnical engineers for continuous evaluation of soil properties along the resistivity profile. Numerous studies...

Mechanical excavation machines, like continuous miners and road headers, have been broadly used in tunneling and underground and surface mines. The disc cutters are seated on the different cutter heads’ to cut different parts of the tunnel face. With the increase in the cutters’ size and power, the cutting disc cutters’ capacity has been extended t...

This paper investigated the dynamic response of plain concrete with three different strength grades, namely C30, C40, and C50, at an early age (3, 7, 14, and 28 days, respectively). Significant patterns were uncovered using a 75-mm-diameter split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) apparatus. Initially, pronounced viscoelastic behaviour was observed in t...

Geo-engineering problems are known for their complexity and high uncertainty levels, requiring precise definitions, past experiences, logical reasoning, mathematical analysis, and practical insight to address them effectively. Soft Computing (SC) methods have gained popularity in engineering disciplines such as mining and civil engineering due to c...

Hardgrove grindability index South African coalfields A B S T R A C T The use of coal in applications such as power generation is influenced by its combustibility, sulphur content, Hardgrove grindability index (HGI), and abrasivity index (AI), including its volatile matter and ash content, etc. Collectively, these properties affect the quality and...

In this research, the cohesive length of various rock types is measured using quantitative fractography alongside a recently developed multifractal analysis. This length is then utilized to gauge material cohesive stress through the theory of critical distances. Furthermore, the fracture process zone length of different rings sourced from identical...

Rockburst, coal bump, and mine earthquake are the most important dynamic disaster phenomena in deep mining. This paper summarizes the differences and connections between rockburst, coal bumps and mine earthquakes in terms of definition, mechanism, phenomenon, evaluation index, etc. The definition and evolution progress of the three disaster categor...

This study examines the influence of zigzag joint configuration on crack propagation in centrally cracked Brazilian disks subjected to diametric forces, employing a 2-dimensional Particle Flow Code (PFC2D). An 80-mm-diameter disk specimen was used, featuring a single zigzag joint positioned at its center. The angles between the zigzag joint walls v...

With the escalating demand for underground mining and infrastructure construction, the optimization of tunnel construction has emerged as a primary concern for researchers. The geological conditions encountered during the excavation of hard rock tunnels using tunnel boring machines (TBM) significantly impact construction efficiency and cost-effecti...

Complement inhibition has shown promise in various disorders, including COVID-19. A prediction tool including complement genetic variants is vital. This study aims to identify crucial complement-related variants and determine an optimal pattern for accurate disease outcome prediction. Genetic data from 204 COVID-19 patients hospitalized between Apr...

One of the ambient effects of production blasting is flyrock. To effectively manage flyrock throw distance in mining, there is the necessity to successfully envisage blasting output without sacrificing the hazardous impact of flyrock which may result in fatality and operational shutdown. For flyrock throw distance prediction, velocity of detonation...

Open pit mines are large geotechnical structures. Their stability is an important consideration in the mining industry. The deformations of geotechnical structures often involve the coupled interaction between the pore fluid pressure and the nonlinear deformation of soil, characterised by poro-elasto-plastic behaviour. This paper develops the scale...

A significant part of monument conservation due to in situ weathering processes requires an assessment of the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of granite to assess the monument’s structural integrity. Based on the minimum intervention principles of modern monument conservation, the retrieval of intact granite samples from monuments to determin...

The uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) of rocks is one of the key parameters for evaluating the safety and stability of civil and mining structures. In this study, 386 rock samples containing four properties named the load strength (PLS), the porosity (Pn), the P-wave velocity (Vp), and the Schmidt hardness rebound number (SHR) are utilized to pre...

Blasting constitutes an essential component of the mining and construction industries. However, the associated nuisances, particularly blast vibration, have emerged as significant concerns that pose threats to operational stability and the safety of the surrounding areas. Given the increasing emphasis on sustainability, ecological responsibility, s...

California bearing ratio (CBR) test is one of the comprehensive tests used for the last few decades to design the pavement thickness of roadways, railways and airport runways. Laboratory-performed CBR test is considerably rigorous and time-taking. In a quest for an alternative solution, this study utilizes novel computational approaches, including...

Mine blasting can have a destructive effect on the environment. Among these effects, air overpressure (AOp) is a major concern. Therefore, a careful assessment of the AOp intensity should be conducted before any blasting operation in order to minimize the associated environmental detriment. Several empirical models have been established to predict...

Ever since the introduction of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in the 1970s, their demand has increased exponentially with their applications in electric vehicles, smartphones, and energy storage systems. To cope with the increase in demand and the ensuing environmental effects of excessive mining activities and waste production, it becomes crucial to...

Thin Spray-On Liner (TSL) has been widely used in underground engineering support such as mining due to its convenient operation and good support effect. The TSL applied to the rock is inevitably affected by dynamic loads from excavation. In order to study the support effect of TSL on a rock under dynamic load, a series of uniaxial compression expe...

Accurate interpretation of stratigraphic profiles, the phreatic surface and the spatial variability of geomaterials are essential to produce representative behaviour of geomechanical systems through numerical simulations. When considering slope stability, variations in soil layer boundaries and the phreatic surface may result in misleading metrics...

Rock strength is a crucial factor to consider when designing and constructing underground projects. This study utilizes a gene expression programming (GEP) algorithm-based model to predict the true triaxial strength of rocks, taking into account the influence of rock genesis on their mechanical behavior during the model building process. A true tri...

In surface mines, bench blasting is a typical way of excavating hard rock mass. Although a significant development has taken place in explosive technology but still only a part of the energy is used to excavate and a large proportion of energy is wasted away and creates a number of nuisances. Backbreak, massive rock fragmentation, and high-intensit...

In this article, the effects of porosity and its geometry on tensile features of concrete were investigated, using the Brazilian test and three dimensions PFC model. In the first step, the PFC sample was calibrated by indirect tensile lab outcomes and uniaxial compression test outputs. In the next step, indirect tensile tests were done on the model...

Rockburst prediction is crucial in deep hard rock mines and tunnels to make safer working conditions. Due to the complex interaction of many factors involved in rockburst prediction, such as multi-variable and multi-interference factors, three hybrid support vector machine (SVM) models optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO), Harris hawk opt...

Pillar stability is an important condition for safe work in room-and-pillar mines. The instability of pillars will lead to large-scale collapse hazards, and the accurate estimation of induced stresses at different positions in the pillar is helpful for pillar design and guaranteeing pillar stability. There are many modeling methods to design pillar...

Conical picks are widely used as cutting tools in shearers and roadheaders, and the mean cutting force (MCF) is one of the important parameters affecting conical pick performance. As MCF depends on a number of parameters and due to that the existing empirical and theoretical formulas and numerical modelling are not sufficient enough and reliable to...

According to chaos theory, some underlying patterns can disclose the order of disordered systems. Here, it has been discussed that intermittency of rough rock fractured surfaces is an orderable disorder at intermediate length scales. However, this kind of disorder is more complicated than simple fractal or even multi-scaling behaviours. It is plann...

The stability of underground entry-type excavations will directly affect the working environment and the safety of staff. Empirical critical span graphs and traditional statistics learning methods can not meet the requirements of high accuracy for stability assessment of entry-type excavations. Therefore, this study proposes a new prediction method...

Roughness of rock fractured surfaces is one of the most important factors controlling fluid flow in rock masses. Roughness quantification is of prime importance for modelling the flow of ground waters as well as reservoir fluid mechanics. In this study, with the aid of high-resolution 3D X-ray CT scanning and image processing techniques, the roughn...

The quality of rock fragmentation intensively affects downstream operations and operational costs. Besides, Environmental side effects are inevitable due to mine blasting despite improvements in blasting consequences such as fly-rock and back-break. This study concentrates on optimizing mine blasting patterns for environmentally friendly mineral pr...

Elastic constants of rock materials are the basic parameters required for modeling the response of rock materials under mechanical loads. Experimental tests for determining these properties are expensive, time-consuming and suffer from a high uncertainty due to both experimental limitations and the heterogeneous nature of rock materials. To avoid s...

The assessment of slopes characterized by complex geometries and multiple strata is a challenging task. The benefit gained from a proper slope design through optimization of slope parameters such as the slope angle and bench width helps to reduce the excavation cost. However, the implementation of slope stability optimization with the finite ele...

Ground vibration is one of the most unfavourable environmental effects of blasting activities, which can cause serious damage to neighboring homes and structures. As a result, effective forecasting of their severity is critical to controlling and reducing their recurrence. There are several conventional vibration predictor equations available propo...

In this paper, a rotation-invariant local binary pattern operator equipped with a local contrast measure (riLBPc) is employed to characterize the type of mineral twinning by inspecting the texture properties of crystals. The proposed method uses photomicrographs of minerals and produces LBP histograms, which might be compared with those included in...

Governance of abandoned mines has become a pressing issue for China. The utilization of abandoned mines is a technology that can solve the problem of governance and recreate the value of mines, which is in line with the current strategic goals of ecological protection and double carbon in China. In this paper, the various utilization models and the...

Mine slope design is a complex task that requires consideration of geotechnical analysis, structural stability, economics and the environment. Economic factors usually drive mine slope design, particularly in the case of open‐pit designs, where the process of steepening slope walls by several degrees can have profound financial implications. Due to...

Blast-induced ground vibration is considered as one of the most hazardous phenomena of mine blasting, which can even cause casualties and severe damages to the adjacent properties. Measuring peak particle velocity (PPV) is helpful to know the actual vibration level but prediction of blast vibration prior to the blast is a tedious job due to involve...

The present paper focuses on designing an artificial neural network (ANN) model and a multiple regression analysis (MRA) that could be used to predict factor of safety of dragline dump slope. To implement these two models, the dataset was utilized from the numerical simulation results of dragline dump slopes, wherein 216 dragline dump slope models...

Microseismic location systems tend to be high-speed and precise. However, the requirement of high precision tends to slow down the calculation speed. Fortunately, metaheuristics are able to alleviate this problem. In this research, metaheuristic algorithms are used to improve the performance of cross-correlation stacking (CCS). CCS has able to prov...

The influence of rock mineral composition and mineral grain size on basic rock strength performance and AE characteristics have been studied, 13 different rocks microstructures are analyzed in an optical microscope thin section using petrographic image analysis, making it possible to determine the mineral composition and mineral texture characteris...

Since conical pick cutting is a complex process of multi-factor coupling effects, theoretical model construction for cutting force prediction is a quite difficult task. In this paper, various novel intelligent models based on chaos-optimized slime mould algorithm (COSMA) and random forest (RF) are proposed for this task. In the proposed COSMA-RF me...

This paper investigates the viability of an increase in waste rock storage by backfilling the Falcon pit and extending the portal of the Fosterville gold mine, located in Bendigo, Australia. The structure will maintain the current access to the tunnel whilst developing a fillable void. Once completed the project will allow for a total increase of 9...

It is of crucial significance to study the effect of loading rate on the behaviour of rock because engineering structures are subjected to multiple loading conditions in their entire life. Although rock behaviour under single loading rate has been widely studied but very limited research has been conducted to study the performance of rock strength...

Backbreak (BB) is one of the serious adverse blasting consequences in open-pit mines, because it frequently reduces economic benefits and seriously affects the safety of mines. Therefore, rapid and accurate prediction of BB is of great significance to mine blasting design and other production activities. For this purpose, six different swarm intell...

Physico-mechanical properties of rocks have a direct correlation with the drilling rate of percussive drill. The prediction of drilling rate is important for the deployment of drills during the planning stage. In tropical climatic regions, limestone is classified as blocky, very blocky, blocky/ seamy and disintegrated based on the degree of weather...

Open-pit mine design and long-term planning are crucial parts of the mining industry. It contains the technical plan that must be followed from the beginning of mine development to mine closure. Every deposit can be mined entirely, however, many things need to be carefully considered before mining the whole deposit. An optimal pit outline is one of...

The process of utilising drill and blast techniques is used to improve mining performance. Drill and blast techniques have been proven to be more efficient and cost-effective compared to conventional mechanical rock breakage with machines. The degree of efficiency of the drill and blast process varies from mine to mine. These influencing factors re...

The rockburst is one of the serious mining hazards, that cause injury, death, damage to mining equipment, and leads to financial problems in mining constructions. At the same time, mining is the major and essential resource of mineral commodities, that all mining locations uncover important for sustaining and enhancing their needs of dwelling. More...

Hundreds of fatalities are being reported every year due to rampant slope failures along road-cut engineered slopes in the Himalayan region. Prevailing perilous conditions of cut slopes are mainly due to adverse geological attributes and ever-rising anthropogenic factors. To procure a landslide resilient design along roads in mountainous regions, a...

Boulders which are generated during primary blasting are required to undergo secondary blasting prior to crusher operation. Hydraulic rock breaker is one of the techniques which is being utilized to break boulders instead of secondary blasting. This study aims to develop an architecture of AI model for rock breakers with autonomous remote operation...

A sudden downward movement of the geomaterial, either composed of soil, rock, or a mixture of both, along the mountain slopes due to various natural or anthropogenic factors is known as a landslide. The Himalayan Mountain slopes are either made up of residual soil or rocks. Residual soil is formed from weathering of the bedrock and mainly occurs in...

Backbreak is a rock fracture problem that exceeds the limits of the last row of holes in an explosion operation. Excessive backbreak increases operational costs and also poses a threat to mine safety. In this regard, a new hybrid intelligence approach based on random forest (RF) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed for predicting backb...

The original version of this article unfortunately contains two mistakes. The spelling of the third author's name was incorrect. The correct name is Pouyan Fakharian (P. Fakharian). Another error was in the acknowledgment section. The correct Grant No. is KJQN202103415.

This paper presents a numerical technique for geotechnical slope stability analysis, integrating digital image meshing with the scaled boundary finite element method, allowing site conditions such as complex stratigraphies, surface and internal geometry evolution to be simulated in a robust and straightforward procedure. The quadtree decomposition...

Air overpressure is a critical negative effect of blasting in construction or production sites and projects. So far, many attempts have been made to prevent or reduce this negative effect on the nearby construction, equipment, or people. While various experiential equations have been proposed to forecast the air overpressure value for determining t...

The waste rock and tailings backfill into the mined-out areas are the most effective method for solving the environmental pollution and surface disasters for nonferrous metals mines. In practice, the success and availability of backfill operations are dependent on the slurry fluidity and the strength properties of cement backfill. The transport of...

Stress conditions are critical in deep hard rock mining and significantly influence hard rock cuttability. The peak cutting force (PCF), cutting work (CW), and specific energy (SE) can reflect rock cuttability and determine the feasibility and saving of mechanized mining to some extent. In this paper, the influence of uniaxial lateral stress on roc...

In this paper, an attempt has been made to implement various machine learning techniques to predict the factor of safety of a natural residual soil slope and a man-made overburden mine dump slope using several physical and geometrical parameters of the respective slopes. As the stability predictions of a slope, whether natural or man-made, is very...

Slope stability analysis is a challenging task when complex stratigraphies, complex geometries and spatially variably soil parameters are considered. Numerical methods, such as the finite element method are commonly used in slope stability analyses, however, these methods require significant user input when meshing geometries consisting of heter...

The blasting operation is an integral part of mines, and it is still being used as the most economical tool to fragment and displace rock mass. Appropriate blast optimization alleviates undesirable side effects, such as ground vibration, air blasts and flyrock, and it and enhances rock fragmentation. Blast optimization can also be effective in redu...

The mining industry in Australia faces significant challenges in rock deposits that become less concentrated and fragmented, which require greater levels of energy to extract the same volume, due to higher energy and labour costs in Australia. The industry is rapidly moving from investment in new mines towards the ongoing operations of existing min...