Document Type : Case Study

Authors

1 Department of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran

2 Department of Industrial Engineering, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran

3 School of Mining, Petroleum & Geophysics Engineering, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran

Abstract

Predicting the sawability of the dimension stone is one of the most important factors involved in production planning. Moreover, this factor can be used as an important criterion in the cost estimation and planning of the stone plants. The main purpose for carrying out this work was to rank the sawability of the dimension stone using the PROMETHEE method. In this research work, four important physical and mechanical properties of rocks including the uniaxial compressive strength, Schmiazek F-abrasivity, mohs hardness, and Young's modulus were evaluated as the criteria. During the research process, two groups of dimension stones were selected and analyzed. The rock samples were collected from a number of Iranian factories for the laboratory tests. The production rate of each sawn stone was selected to verify the proposed sawability ranking method. The results obtained showed that the new ranking method can be reliably used for evaluating the sawability of the dimension stone at any stone factory with different rocks only by the physical and mechanical properties testing.

Keywords