ABSTRACT

Ground Support in Mining and Underground Construction-Villaescusa & Potvin (eds.) © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 90 5809 640 8

ABSTRACT: The West Australian mining industry has an urgent need for the construction of a local dynamic test facility that can perform repeatable dynamic loading on reinforcement systems, support systems and ground control schemes. The West Australian School of Mines, with the assistance of industry and government funding, has developed a test facility using a novel testing process. The facility is in the commissioning phase, and has been proven to enable repeatable dynamic loading of reinforcement systems. Tests have a high level of instrumentation to measure forces and displacements combined with digital video recording. Analysis of these data allow the calculation of energy absorbed from the force displacement curves of the tested system and the impact point in the facility.