Optimally Locating Additional Drill Holes in Three Dimensions Using Grade and Simulated Annealing
Saeed Soltani-Mohammadi, Ardeshir Hezarkhani, Adnan Tercan · Journal of the Geological Society of India · 2012
Abstract Average kriging variance is a standard tool used in optimization of the location of additional drill holes. However, this tool cannot distinguish between areas with different priorities. This limitation could be eliminated by using weighted average kriging variance. This paper extends the problem of optimal location to three dimensional cases, use grade as a weight and search optimum locations by simulated annealing. Weighted average kriging variance is used as objective function. The method is applied to a copper deposit. Results have shown that weighting of the estimation variance with “grade” is effective only when the difference among the grades estimated for different blocks is considerable.