Mining and Petroleum

Interim Group Leaders: Professor Richard Hillis and Professor Stephen Priest

The core discipline areas for the research group will lie within Resources Engineering, Extractive Metallurgy and
Geoscience.  The strong industry-based alignment of mining and petroleum will provide a clear focus for applied research at State, national and international levels.

Research in stochastic rock fracture modelling at Adelaide is internationally recognised (Professor Peter Dowd, Professor Stephen Priest, Dr Chaoshui Xu).  Maintaining and strengthening this capability is strategically important for the University and the Mining and Petroleum Research Group. 

A rock fracture model is the fundamental input required to solve key rock engineering problems in civil, mining, environmental and geothermal applications, so the search for more realistic models is a very active research area.

Existing two-dimensional yield criteria for rock attempt to predict strength on restrictive assumptions on the stress state. There are a number of situations, for example adjacent to deep wellbores, where the stress state is
true triaxial. 

The Group’s involvement with the Drilling Technologies program of the new Deep Exploration Technologies CRC provides the opportunity and the impetus to develop a true triaxial rock testing facility at the University and to initiate research into using novel techniques for mining simulation and animation. 

These techniques have never been used before in a mining engineering environment.  An actual coal mine in Indonesia will serve as the control for the research.

Following a visit by Professor Daniel Mireku-Gyimah, Vice Chancellor, University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa,
Ghana, the Mining and Geomechanics Research Group has resolved to strengthen its strategic links with the University of Mines and Technology (UMT).  This collaboration will focus on the enrolment of postgraduate research students from Ghana under fee relief arrangements yet to be finalised.