Department of Mining Research and Design

Since the 1970’s, the Department of Mining Research and Design of The Research and Development Centre for Mining of Chemical Raw Materials “CHEMKOP” Ltd. has been conducting the works associated with research and engineering support services offered mainly to the Polish underground salt mines and businesses. A considerable decline of the underground salt extraction operations in recent years, as well as the development of new mining survey technologies caused reduction of the research issues to the areas of specialised measurements and surveys of workings’ convergence and rock mass deformations in the underground salt mines, analyses of the influence of salt extraction on rock mass and land surface stability, designs of monitoring networks, and forecasting of mining menace effects.

In addition, our Department personnel implemented projects related to the limitation of water hazard in salt mines, based on interdisciplinary testing of sealing and plugging systems designed for rock mass reinforcement, in co-operation with other research centres and mining companies.

More than 40 years of our experience in continued performance of rock mass deformation effects in underground salt mines resulted in collection of a unique and rich database of measurement results by the CHEMKOP, as well as the development of expertise on the convergence process parameters, measured at the depths from several dozens to nearly 1,000 m. In-house software is used to process our data for calculations, interpretation, and graphic visualisation of research results. Our knowledge constitutes the foundation for the works intended to use excavation voids in salt deposits for the purpose of substance storage or deposition.

We have been providing projections of the impact of salt mining operations on rock mass and land surface, jointly with the research workers of the Faculty of Mining Surveying and Environmental Engineering of the AGH University of Technology for a number of years.