Mining engineering

Mining engineering is a discipline of engineering that ensures that a mineral deposit can be extracted safely and for a profit. It is an engineering discipline that combines material knowledge (geological, civil and material) with the study of operations management processes to determine how to overcome the significant challenges related to extracting mineral wealth from ever deeper mineral deposits.

The mining engineer generally has a strong economic background as one of the significant constraints is dealing with the fluctuating commodity prices which affect the value and thus the geometry of the mineral deposit.

Unlike many engineering disciplines, the mining engineer has little knowledge of the material that he has to work with. Underground openings are blasted from non-homogeneous rock masses where the material properties can only be sampled from a relatively low number of drillholes. There is a significant amount of inference to interpolate/extrapolate where observed faults and contacts may project from the drillholes into rock mass. The second significant challenge that mining engineers face is the stress changes that occur as large volumes of material are extracted from the rock mass.

The mining engineer is responsible for the initial extraction of the ore (defined as material of positive economic value) from the deposit. This includes initial rock blasting and transport to surface.