Review of Hydraulic Fracturing for Preconditioning in Cave Mining

Hydraulic fracturing has been used in cave mining for preconditioning the orebody following its successful application in the oil and gas industries. In this paper, the state of the art of hydraulic fracturing as a preconditioning method in cave mining is presented. Procedures are provided on how to implement prescribed hydraulic fracturing by which effective preconditioning can be realized in any in situ stress condition. Preconditioning is...