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The Rock Slope Engineering Laboratory of the Department of Mining Engineering, IIT(ISM) Dhanbad, was established in 2021.
It is a dedicated research lab on mine slope stability and management approaches.
This lab has three research groups. The first group is working in the domain of monitoring and management of mine slopes using UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and Digital Image Processing (DIP) techniques. The lab has a sophisticated UAV system for carrying out field surveys and other associated work in the mines. All accessories and software tools are available for processing UAV data and estimating the stability of the mine slope. The UAV system has several advantages over other surveying methods in Mining engineering. The remote data acquisition and fast mobility of the system are the essential characteristics. Lab has the facilities to generate high-precision 3D surface models of the mine slope.
The second research group is doing the preliminary testing and lab-scale experiments on using MEMS (Micro-electromechanical Systems) sensors and WSN (Wireless Sensor Network System) to set up a real-time wireless monitoring system. We have an ambitious target of receiving real-time data at our labs through the internet from the mine site about slope deformation and acceleration. The domain is new and emerging and has an excellent future in the Indian mining industry and academia.
The third research group is working on numerical modelling and estimating the status of stability, and validating the data acquired through different systems existing in the lab. The scholars use discontinued-based Particle Flow codes (PFC) of Itasca Inc. for simulation and modelling. They are also using Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua (FLAC) to model rainfall's effect on the stability of mine slopes.
This lab is, at present, executing two externally funded R&D projects from SERB, New Delhi and Coal India Limited, Kolkata. Six project scholars, along with two institutes scholars, are jointly working in the lab. We have supervised two MTech and one PhD thesis recently. We are expecting a few more externally funded projects soon.
The lab is carrying out attractive summer and winter projects (Internship) for the undergraduate students of this institute and also from other institutes of our country. We have completed three successful projects through interns.
Lab also offers free hands-on training on numerical tools FLAC and PFC to limited students each year.
This lab provides a vibrating, dynamic and cordial research environment for the scholars and interns. The scholars are always very much attentive and helpful to the incoming interns.
This lab has published nine peer-reviewed journal and conference papers in recent times. The OCTON 2.0 (IEEE-sponsored conference) awarded the MEMS-based WSN system for mine slope health monitoring as the best paper in the forum on February 2023.
Machine learning approaches are in use by scholars for building intelligent mine slope models.
A student having a research proposal is requested to contact us for fruitful actualisation of the target.
The lab also looks forward to getting self-motivated students to pursue PhD in this lab in the research areas mentioned above through IIT(ISM) JRF entrance.