SAIMM - THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF MINING AND METALLURGY

‘Publish or Perish’  ‘The Academic Man: A Study in the Sociology of a Profession’  Logan Wilson, 1942

This first issue of 2010 features a selection of contributions from the Hardrock Safety conference in September 2009. This is as important a topic as any for an industry that deals with a work function as hazardous as that of deep-level hard rock mining. It is also as complex as any involving rock mechanics, seismology, zero defect in engineering and instrumentation, plus psychology, training and exhaustion hygiene, as illustrated in the papers. In seismology, for example, there have been non-stop efforts to correlate seismic signals with an early warning methodology to avoid rock bursts and other seismic disturbances which can lead to a disastrous loss of life. This work has been going on for over half a century from the time the Chamber of Mines obtained its first (analogue) computer, which was soon replaced by a succession of the best digital systems in an attempt to model the seismic effects into a useful predictive pattern.

Read more: Converting techno talk to techno transfer

The use of mine fill is almost as old as mining itself. Future land use considerations and evolving community attitudes demand that industry comprehensively explores the use of fill, particularly fill generated from mining waste in a diverse range of underground and surface operations.

This book is a concise summary of the considerable body of mine fill knowledge and experience and provides mining engineers and those responsible for the application of fill with a one stop reference, covering the most significant aspects of fill.

Editors: Y. Potvin, E. Thomas and A. Fourie
Publisher: Australian Centre for Geomechanics
ISBN: 0-9756756-2-1
Number of pages: 179

See more details here...

‘The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet’ William Gibson.

This issue contains six Transaction papers and one Journal paper. This is a pleasing change from the pattern of the previous issues during this year, in which there have been some extremely important events and conferences from which a wealth of Journal papers have emerged and which have contributed greatly to the technology transfer functions of the Institute’s publication. It is thus good to see some detailed experimental work with evaluation and conclusions in traditional format.

Read more: Physical Metallurgy

Colleagues,

 We are again coming to the end of another year. Many of you will agree with me that 2009 was an eventful year. The global financial crisis, which started towards the end of 2007, has had a more devastating effect in our industry this year than in the previous two years, with business slowing down and more jobs being lost. Many mining houses have had to cut back on spending to remain afloat. This meant that fewer people could afford to attend many of our technical events. I am told that the Chinese ideogram for ‘crisis’ is composed of two separate characters: one means danger and the other means opportunity. The proper translation is that a crisis is a dangerous opportunity. Often the danger is more readily seen and the opportunity can be well hidden. So, while many of the businesses fell on the wayside, and others disappeared completely altogether, others found this as an opportunity to fine tune procedures and processes and transform into more efficient operations, ready for the coming boom times. We, at SAIMM saw the crisis as an opportunity too. 

We managed to re-organise ourselves and do things differently and more effectively.   

This has resulted in a number of successes.

Let me start by reviewing some of this year’s highlights in the various institute’s various departments: 

Read more: 2009 END OF YEAR MESSAGE FROMTHE DESK OF THE PRESIDENT