Mining Product: S-Pillar - Software for Stone Mine Pillar Design

The S-Pillar software is used for stone mine pillar design.

It was written to assist in the design of stable pillars for room-and-pillar workings in underground stone mines. The calculation methods used in S-Pillar are based on observation of actual pillar performance in 34 different underground operations in the eastern and midwestern United States.

New to version 1.2 (Updated 10/29/18):

• Help system update: The variables in the strength of rectangular pillars equation are more described in the text.
• Help system update: Additional information on Table 6 has been included, including a PDF of the reference.

New to version 1.1:

• Table 3 in the help system updated:
  • Modified  pillar dimensions and recalculated pillar stress for cases No. 17 & 18 based on recent investigations and underground measurements. Pillar stress based on FLAC3D analysis.
  • Modified pillar dimension of case No. 4, now based on “mined” dimensions measured from mine map, previously dimensions were based on “planned dimensions” as measured in the panel adjacent to the failed pillar.
• The x-axis on the factor of safety chart has been updated to plot the minimum width-to-height ratio instead of the effective width-to-height ratio.

Installation instructions:

• Download and unzip the installer to a local folder.
• Open the installer folder and run setup.exe.