CRC ORE

 CRC ORE
 Program:

Program 4: Control (P4-007)

ORE

 
Karo Fathollahzadeh is particularly interested in maximising the discounted value (NPV) of future cash flows over a given planning horizon

 PhD Topic:

Optimisation of long-term open-pit mine production scheduling with Grade Engineering®

 Institution:

Curtin University, Western Australia School of Mines: Minerals, Energy and Chemical Engineering (WASM:MECE)

 Research
 Supervisors:

Associate Professor, Waqar Asad

 Expected
 Completion:

June 2021

 Meet Karo Fathollahzadeh:

ORE

Karo Fathollahzadeh is a PhD student at Curtin University’s Western Australia School of Mines: Minerals, Energy and Chemical Engineering (WASM:MECE). He started his PhD candidature as a part of CRC ORE’s P4-007 project in February 2018. His research investigates scheduling optimisation for open-pit ore mining with Grade Engineering, under a range of mining constraints and attributes.

Prior to moving to Australia, Karo studied Industrial Engineering while based in Iran. He received a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from the University of Kurdistan in October 2014 and a Masters of Industrial Engineering from Kharazmi University of Tehran (Iran) in October 2017.

Upon completion of his PhD, Karo hopes to apply his knowledge of mathematical modelling and implementation through exact and heuristic algorithms in diversified computer programming/IT setups. He is particularly interested in maximising the discounted value (NPV) of future cash flows over a given planning horizon, subject to a number of operational constraints. This includes factoring in any Grade Engineering related constraints.

 Focus area:

Optimisation of long-term open-pit mine production scheduling with Grade Engineering®

This research aims to utilise an orebody model with Grade Engineering attributes for the development and implementation of a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) based mathematical model for production planning or scheduling of mining operations.

The research is also focussed on developing heuristic approaches to address the computational complexity of the mathematical model and generate an optimal open-pit mine production schedule in a reasonable timeframe.

This research is supported by CRC ORE. The focus is on exploring how Grade Engineering techniques could be valuable in the development of open-pit mine production schedules. It looks at new methods or approaches that are missing in the currently available algorithms.