ABSTRACT
Croatia has a long tradition of dimension stone exploitation, mostly by surface extraction. Lately, the dimension stone has been extracted in the world also by underground methods, because of environmental, organisational and economical reasons. In such a case, stability problems require adequate studies in order to avoid expensive and technologically unacceptable artificial support measures. In the Kanfanar quarry near the town of Pazin on the Istrian peninsula an existing active surface exploitation had to be transferred underground because of economical and environmental constraints. The stability analysis was made by numerical modelling with the finite difference code FLAC. These calculations are described in the paper and represent the first phase of the pillar design.
