Vibrating-Wire Monitoring: Keeping Control of Water in Your Mine

Water – we can’t live without it. If the rain were to stop falling and water no longer trickled through the natural water cycle (and the parts of it that have been modified by human intervention), life on earth would cease to exist.

However, despite being a natural blessing overall, in some environments, it can seem like more of a curse. An example of this is the mining industry. Water tends to seep into the places where it is not required and where it can threaten the safety of mine personnel, damage equipment, disrupt production, and generally just cause problems wherever it builds up without proper control and management.

One of the keys to effectively managing water within a mine, surface/open pit or underground, is proper monitoring. Continually keeping tabs on the amount of water in and around the mine, and the way it is behaving, allows mine engineers to always be in control and implement countermeasures where necessary, e.g. dewatering operations, rerouting the flow of water, constructing barricades, etc.

The most common and effective way for mine engineers to monitor bodies of water or groundwater in their mines is to make use of piezometers, with the vibrating-wire type being the instrument of choice in most cases. The data collected, ideally autonomously, from these instruments should then be fed into a vibrating-wire monitoring system for interpretation and decision-making.

The most efficient types of vibrating-wire monitoring systems in modern mines are those that are fully wireless, i.e. where the vibrating-wire piezometers are connected, via wireless nodes, to a central data acquisition and management system.

Two industry-leading systems that serve this purpose extremely well are:

• Newtrax MineHop – Ideally suited for use in underground mines
• Loadsensing LS-G6 system – For surface mines (and civil engineering applications)

Contact us now to find out more about how these systems can benefit your operation – especially in terms of their ability to improve the efficiency of vibrating-wire monitoring.