Simulation of weathered profiles coupled with multivariate block-support simulation of the Puma Nickel Laterite Deposit, Brazil
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Modelling and assessing spatial variability and uncertainty of mineral deposits is critical for both capital investments in mining projects as well as operational issues once a mine is developed. However, traditional approaches for modelling geological domains and geostatistical estimation provide smoothed representations of the pertinent deposit attributes, ignore spatial variability and, thereby, can mislead downstream decisions. Spatial variability and related uncertainty in modelling mineral deposit characteristics of interest, ranging from metal content and geological boundaries to geomechanical - geotechnical rock properties, can be modelled and quantified by stochastic spatial simulations. This is demonstrated through a detailed, step- by-step application to the Puma deposit, a major nickel lateritic asset in Brazil, part of the Onca-Puma mining complex. To integrate the variability of the regolith profiles of the deposit, their thicknesses are calculated after an unwrinkling process is applied and the deposit is then jointly simulated using min/max autocorrelation factors (MAF). The realizations serve as geological boundaries within which Ni, Co, Fe, SiO2, MgO and Dry-tonnage factor (DTF) are subsequently jointly simulated directly at block support scale. The final result is a series of equally probable representations of the Puma deposit, which are used to quantify and assess the uncertainty about key aspects of the project at the Puma deposit, such as the uncertainty of the in-situ resources documented herein, and the strict control of the ore's quality that feeds the ferronickel processing plant. The framework presented shows the advantages of the MAF and direct block simulation approaches for the efficient joint simulation of spatially variant geological attributes of large deposits for industrial environments. The methods presented are general, new in the context of geotechnical and geomechanical engineering, and can assist in the modelling of spatial variability and quantification of uncertainty linked to geotechnical rock properties and pertinent lithological boundaries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".