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The international symposia on block and sublevel caving was initiated by the Australian Centre for Geomechanics, the Universidad of de los Andes, Chile, the University of Toronto, Canada, and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. The ACG was delighted to host the Second International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving for the first time in Australia. It is intended for this symposium to run every four years, in between the MassMin Symposia (Luleå 2008, Sudbury 2012).

The growing popularity of caving methods around the world is largely due to the very low production cost and the intrinsic safety associated with this mining approach. It is often the only viable mining method for some of the lower grade massive orebodies that are becoming too deep for open pit mining.

Strategically, most medium and large mining companies are operating or planning to operate a caving mine. Codelco's El Teniente mine in Chile and the LKAB Kiruna Mine in Sweden are among the largest and most famous caving operations in the world. Australia’s leading caving operations include Rio Tinto's Northparkes mines, BHP Billiton Nickel West's Perseverance Mine and Newcrest's Telfer and Ridgeway gold mines.

Thank you to all those who attended the Caving 2010 Symposium.

The ACG would welcome your feedback on the Caving 2010 Symposium. We have an online appraisal form - it will only take a minute of your time.

Caving 2010 Proceedings

Editor: Yves Potvin
Publisher: Australian Centre for Geomechanics
ISBN: 978-0-9806154-1-8
Number of pages: 706

During the last decade, caving mining has become one of the most research intensive areas of mining engineering. This is driven by the need to reduce the risk associated with these methods. Risk reductions will be achieved by better understanding the behaviour of in situ rock mass, the stresses, the natural fragmentation process, the material flow and draw control. These are major themes of this symposium and the proceedings contain the state-of-the-art research results in these areas. The benefits of this research will be realised by bringing this new knowledge from researchers to mine operators so it can be included in the design and planning of caving mines.

Caving 2010 attracted excellent international participation with contributions from 11 countries.

The proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving feature 50 high calibre papers that were presented at Caving 2010 held in Perth, Western Australia, 20-22 April 2010.

Accompanying these proceedings is a CD ROM which features many of the figures in full colour.