Backfilling Materials for Underground Mining

Dear Colleagues,

Backfilling of mined-out areas is a fundamental component of many underground mining operations. The backfill material provides support to the surrounding rock mass, reduces wasteful dilution, enables a safe working area for production activities and mitigates the risk of surface subsidence. By combining tailing materials in backfill, it is possible to reduce the environmental footprint of the mine and assist with final site rehabilitation. Therefore, cemented paste backfill (CPB) has become an important component of underground mining operations. CPB is a mixture of tailings, water, and cement used to fill underground stopes. Reducing backfilling cost by decreasing cement content may increase ore dilution from poorly performing backfill exposures. Alternatively, increasing cement content will raise the costs; however, it could increase the productivity through improved mining system cycle times. To reduce the cost and keep the CBP strength at its required level, use of other binder materials can reduce the cost while maintaining its optimal strength performance. Moreover, the tailings particle size and density significantly alter the strength, microstructure, water demand and economic costs of backfill mixtures. In addition, CPB, solid waste backfilling has become popular in underground mining activities specially coal mining. In coal mining, backfilling of the gob area is performed in conjunction with mining operations. The properties of solid waste backfilled materials may significantly influence local strata behaviour. Therefore, assessment of the behaviour of backfill material under different in-situ stress conditions is of crucial importance. This Special Issue aims to bring together corresponding studies from all these areas including fundamental constitutive model studies, experimental studies, as well as analytical and numerical analyses, to characterize backfill material. We welcome studies on mine stability and mining operation issues in mining with backfill and backfill mining case studies.

The first round deadline is 30 November 2018.

Dr. Abbas Taheri
Prof. Dr. Jixiong Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Cement paste backfilling
• Solid backfilling
• Underground mining
• Constitutive and numerical modelling
• Experimental studies
• Backfilling optimization
• Mine operation

• Backfilling Materials for Underground Mining, Volume II in Minerals (21 articles)
• Backfilling Materials for Underground Mining, Volume III in Minerals (13 articles)