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Bayesian statistics and production reliability assessments for mining operations

University of British Columbia

This thesis presents a novel application of structural reliability concepts to assess the reliability of mining operations. “Limit-states” are defined to obtain the probability that the total productivity — measured in production time or economic gain — exceeds user-selected thresholds. Focus is on the impact of equipment downtime and other non-operating instances on the productivity and the economic costs of the operation. A comprehensive set of data gathered at a real-world mining facility is utilized to calibrate the probabilistic models. In particular, the utilization of Bayesian inference facilitates the inclusion of data — and updating of the production probabilities — as they become available. The thesis includes a detailed description of the Bayesian approach, as well as the limit-state-based reliability methodology. A comprehensive numerical example demonstrates the methodology and the usefulness of the probabilistic results.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2008-10-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/2741

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/