About the Department

The work of the Rock Engineering Research Group, under the leadership of Prof Francois Malan, is now well established, with three PhD students, seven MSc students and two honours students working under his guidance. Work also continued in the Department’s three industry-sponsored research chairs:

Harmony Gold Chair in Rock Engineering and Numerical Modelling AEL Intelligent Blasting Chair for Innovative Rock-breaking Technology Murray & Roberts Chair in Industry Leadership 4.0

Harmony Gold’s support for the Chair in Rock Engineering continued in 2020 when it concluded its third consecutive three-year research agreement with the University of Pretoria. This Chair conducts research into techniques to simulate rock mass behaviour in South Africa’s deep-level gold mines, which makes an important contribution to the sustainability of the industry. The three-year research agreement with AEL Mining Services for the AEL Intelligent Blasting Chair for Innovative Rock-breaking Technology, established in 2018, came to an end in December 2020. Negotiations are, however, under way to extend this agreement. Outputs of this Chair include the completion of a master’s study cum laude in 2019 by Jennifer van der Walt, a staff member of the Department, from the work she undertook in the Chair. The Murray & Roberts Chair in Industry Leadership 4.0, which came into effect in January 2020, is actively focusing on the Department’s management and leadership research area. Among the proposed projects are the acceptance of technology by leaders and the safety and risk leadership required by South African mining companies to navigate the impact of the 4IR. Two postgraduate students are working together with Prof Ronny Webber-Youngman and Dr Johann Uys in this area.

A further new development in the Department is its involvement in the Exxaro Chair in XR Technology. This Chair is formally housed in the Department of Information Science in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology. This is due to the interdisciplinary nature of the work groups and focus of the Department of Information Science and the Department of Mining Engineering. The Chair, which will be formally launched on 1 September 2021, has three main focus areas: to develop a proof-of-concept application of XR systems within the Exxaro Group, to use Exxaro’s test sites to evaluate the effectivity of XR interventions, and to establish the viability of these interventions within the mining industry.

COLLABORATION

The Department undertook several collaborative and cross-cutting contract research initiatives during the period under review. These efforts are coordinated by the Department’s Mining Resilience Research Centre (MRRC), which obtained several new contract research projects from industry in 2020/21. It also continued its excellent relationship with the Mine Health and Safety Council (MHSC) and was awarded a further project in 2020.

The Department furthermore continued its involvement in the South African Mining, Extraction, Research, Development and Innovation (SAMERDI) initiative, funded by the Minerals Council South Africa (MCSA) and the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI). This is a collaborative initiative between the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the University of Pretoria, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Johannesburg, coordinated under the auspices of the Mandela Mining Precinct.

A highlight for the period under review was the approval of a proposal for the establishment of the SAMERDI Research Centre in Mechanised Mining Systems at the University of Pretoria as a joint venture by the Department of Mining Engineering and the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. In this regard, UP (through the MRRC) will coordinate research by the partner institutions to further explore activities related to mine layout design, mechanisation and new mining methods to ensure the sustainability of the South African mining industry.