Mine-scale simulation of slip- and crush-type seismic events using inelastic modeling

ABSTRACT: When performing short- or intermediate-term seismic hazard assessments, recorded historical seismicity can be used as a proxy for future seismicity. However, for long-term assessments, changes in mining conditions (e.g., expansion of development and production to deeper levels or to areas with higher/lower stress, encountering new geological structures, etc.) may mean that historical seismicity will not be representative of future seismicity. Instead, it can be more appropriate to make use of a catalogue of synthetic seismicity derived from inelastic numerical modelling. Published methods for generating such catalogs involve clustering model elements that have undergone inelastic deformation, with each cluster constituting a synthetic seismic event. In this paper, we propose an extension to these methods, which also accounts for the convergence of any excavations in proximity to a given cluster. We demonstrate that the proposed method can be used to produce synthetic catalogues that include both slip- and crush-type sources.