Search Documents

WE the undersigned, being all persons of full age and citizens of the United States, and a majority residents of the State of New York, desiring to form a corporation pursuant to the provisions of the Membership Corporations Law for the purpose of incorporating, 8s provided in Section 5 of Article I. of said law, the existing unincorporated association known as American Institute of Mining Engineers, do hereby make, acknowledge and file this Certificate for that purpose, and do Certify as follows: I. That the American Institute of Mining Engineers is an unincorporated association organized and existing with the object of promoting the arts and sciences connected with the economic production of the useful minerals and metals and the welfare of those employed in these industries by means of meetings for social intercourse and the reading and discussion of professional papers, and to circulate by means of publications among its members and associates the information thus obtained. II. That the persons duly appointed or designated to manage the affairs of said association are designated by the rules thereof Members of its Council; that the under- signed are all members of said Council as the same was constituted on the 29th day of December, 1904.

Jan 1, 1932

By A. J. Brown

I herewith send to the Institute a sample of Pancake coal. It is rather early yet to make any estimate of the future value of the discovery; but it is certainly the most promising vein of coal yet discovered in the State of Nevada, and, I believe, the first true coal found west of the Rocky Mountains, or perhaps west of the Missouri River, unless some of the Utah coals belong to the coal measures of the Carboniferous age. The Pancake vein certainly belongs * Since the above paper was read before the Institute, some modifications in the description of the machine have been made in order that recent improvements may be embraced.—U. S. A.

By Allen D. Gorrison

EFFORT to develop fundamental quantitative information and improved technique in the production of petroleum has long been faced with difficulties of a particularly evasive nature, owing to a combination of circumstances. In the first place, petroleum comes from far below the ground, out of sight, so that information derived from indirect observations must be extrapolated to reservoir conditions. If one does not force the analogy too far, the petroleum engineer may be said to be somewhat in the position of the astronomer. The actual phenomena which he wishes to observe in detail appear at a place so deep in the earth?s crust that personal observations and direct experiments are impossible.

Jan 1, 1942

By F. K. Pence

THE reduction of the firing of clay wares to a science has been one of the most difficult problems of modern ceramic engineering. The number of factors involved in the treatment of these wares has been such a complicated composite of the chemical and the physical properties that, according to the old practice, results depended rather on the art of the operator than on any scientific data available. The combined influence of the chemical and physical properties of clay minerals renders it difficult to apply the data obtained in one operation to the forecasting of details to be applied in another. In maturing clay-ware bodies by the application of heat, the chemical reactions involved are, in general, incomplete. The object frequently is to secure a certain physical quality, as density, color, or strength, rather than any particular chemical composition or development: This is more generally true of the so-called crude clay products. In the case of certain more high-grade wares, as the porcelains, it is necessary to reach the temperature required to bring about a certain molecular development or crystalline structure; but even here, time and temperature are at work and must be considered jointly. The conditions attending the firing of clay wares has led to the use of certain devices in the measurement of the progress of the firing process whereby the influence of the various burning factors on the clay composition under fire is indicated. In the simplest application of this practice, samples of the ware itself are so placed as to be drawn for observation at various intervals during the burn. Although the appearance is affected by the quick cooling treatment, by experience, this practice is successfully used, particularly in the brick industry. The settle of the setting of brick, as measured from the top of the kiln may also serve as a guide in the firing operation. Another example is found in the stoneware industry, where the practice of arranging test pieces made of the same composition

Jan 9, 1919

By W. F. McDermott

This is the dawning of the computer age in process control. As 1968 drew to a close, many plants had computer installations which were being used for logging, monitoring and reporting. Today, computer usage is given serious consideration before the construction of any major minerals processing plant. Unitized automatic control of individual processes is abundant. Many plants are considering closing these control loops, i.e., allowing the computer to direct the operation of the controllers (Digital Analog Control-DAC). The next step is to make the computer itself the controller (Direct Digital Control-DDC)1 Perhaps the most important future use of computers will be in controlling interrelated operations and control units. Progress along these lines depends on the steadily improving capabilities in the field of mathematical modeling.

Jan 1, 1970

By Roy E. Gilbert

IN what ways can conventional geophysical methods be used in the search for quartz-sulphide veins covered by several feet of overburden? The New Park Mining Co., in search of an answer to this question, empirically tested simple geochemical, electrical, and magnetic methods over known ore bodies and geologic structures. Geochemical methods were the only ones found to be applicable to direct ore search. Indirect uses were found for electrical and magnetic tests. Experiments were conducted in the southeastern part of the Park City mining district. Ore in this part of the district is found principally in steeply dipping veins which are localized along faults and fractures that cut Paleozoic sediments and quartz diorite intrusives. Extensive soil cover effiectively hides both veins and country rock. The type of vein most likely to

Jan 1, 1953

By Oberlin Smith

The experiments described in this paper are very incomplete and only preliminary to those I hope to make in the future. Having had a good deal of experience in cutting, forming and drawing sheet-metals, and feeling a great interest in the commercially new and wonderful metal, aluminum, I applied to my friend, Mr. A. E. Hunt, for some specimens in sheet-form, that I might, from time to time, test its working-properties in presses with which we happened to be experimenting at the works of the Ferracute Machine Company. The chances for such trials being accidental only, and the time having been limited to the last few weeks, no crucial experiments have been tried, and no exact data have been obtained for a rigid comparison with other metals. The results of what little we have done, however, are shown in the articles exhibited in connection with the reading of this paper, which comprise various cups, plates, boxes, bells and cartridge-cup and shells. For the latter I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Hobbs, of the Union Metallic Cartridge Co., who, at my request, ran several pieces of sheet-aluminum through the dies with which he was making brass cartridges. The specimens are rougher than they would be had the metal not been a little too thin for the particular dies which he happened to be running.

Jan 1, 1890

By George S. Rice

IN other countries, research involving testing in various phases of ground movement and lessening its damaging effects, as by roof control, is going on more intensively than in this country, as evidenced by official mining papers and general articles appearing- in .Great Britain, Germany, France, and South Africa. One most important bulletin, "Some Aspects of Deep Level Mining on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines with Special Reference to Rock Bursts,"' was published by the Association of Mine Managers of the Transvaal, Johannesburg, under date of June, 1933, though not received in this country until 1.934. Since the deepest mining in the world is being done on the Rand-several mines over 7000 ft. deep and the Robinson mine 8000 ft.-the studies made are of intense interest to all mining men who have to deal with heavy ground pressure. In the discussion following the papers differences of opinions are shown on a number of problems; for example, on the ade¬quacy of sand-filling to prevent rock bursts and whether compressible or rigid artificial supports are best; also whether pressure bursts are due to the doming of strata and collapse of a lag of the dome or to induced shear cracks in the hanging wall. The problem of obtaining some means of warning of an impending rock burst led to testing with height indicators to find whether warning might be obtained by the lessening of distance between hanging wall and footwall. The indicators used are similar in idea but not in detail to the "convergence recorders" developed by the Safety in Mines Research Board of Great Britain for their roof-control studies in coal mines. Success at several Rand mines is claimed in that indicator records give some degree of warning when the lessening of height is rapid, although, on the other hand, when this happens bursts do not always occur.

Jan 1, 1935

By D. B. Dowling

The interest which has been aroused in prospecting for oil in the foothills of southern Alberta, and in the oil possibilities of the known gas fields situated in the less-disturbed areas, called for a much closer examination of the structure, thickness, and composition of the underlying rocks of the region than had hitherto been made. The areal geology of the larger part of the great plains was outlined by Dawson, McConnell, and Tyrrell, between 1881 and 1885. The foothill area was not critically examined at that time, owing to the time which would have been required for its proper study and the difficulty that was found in recognizing in the foothills the divisions which had been adopted in the mapping of the formations of the plains. This was due in great measure to the paucity of exposures in continuous sections of the lower divisions of the Upper Cretaceous. Since the pioneer work on the plains was published, the beds which form continuations south into Montana have been critically examined, The Canadian beds arch over the end of a flat anticline which rises to the south; and two sections in Montana, one on each side of the anticline, help to explain some of the difficulties previously encountered in the mapping of the measures found in the foothills. The index map, Fig. 1, shows the area studied, and its relation to southeastern Alberta, and to Montana. Problems of Correlation The principal difficulty experienced in correlation was in connection with the measures known as the Montana group. The beds of this group did not seem to agree in the two Montana sections. They showed the same differences to some extent as are encountered in comparing the foothill measures with those of the plains. The Montana group in Dakota and Manitoba consists of a series of shales of marine origin. In the eastern Montana section two sandstone members appear, leaving a shale member at the top and another

Jan 1, 1916

By Roswell H. Johnson, W. E. Bernard

To know the rate of declinc of oil wells is very important, yet ordinarily we are prevented from getting this rate because the oil from several wells is put into one or a few tanks as soon as the wells have been connected to the power. The object of doing this is economy of tanks, pipes, labor, and accounting. But we are making a great sacrifice for this small economy. The advantages of the individual records are that we would know better: 1. When the well has ceased to be profitable. 2. When a well has gotten into bad condition. 3. The real record of the yield per acre and the rate of decline of the wells. The lease total is too mixed as to age of the wells for existing records to have much significance. To obtain such individual well records and more accurate logs are the great desiderata of satisfactory management of oil properties. 4. Which wells show the slowest decline—information which is valuable in locating new wells or purchasing adjoining leases. The truth of this statement is evident, when we reflect upon the large number of purchases of producing property. Intelligent appraisal is of the utmost advantage and it is impossible without individual well-pro-

Jan 1, 1918

By E. L. Kapfer

A preliminary description is made of the field of automation and optimization of the oxygen blast furnace process. The concept of static and dynamic process control is illustrated. After a short general description of all factors concerning the optimization of this process, a learning system is derived which gives better results than models previously used. This learning or self-adaptive control system uses statistical methods with exponential aging of process data and requires derivation of multi-variable functions of the process for which measurements can be made available. The practical application of this new procedure and of additional measuring instruments are discussed, and results obtained in plants using the adaptive control system are described. A survey of European steel plant automation using the Siemens technique is presented.

Jan 1, 1969

By AIME AIME

FOR the use of workmen and employees, the company should establish a dispensary and a -hospital where workmen who suffer accidents or professional diseases may be taken care of; and at suitable places in the mine or metallurgical plant it should install first-aid stations. Workmen have a right to receive 75 per cent of their wages while they are unable to perform their work as result of a professional disease; but some companies pay full wages and in the case of natural disease, with the exception of venereal, alcoholism, injuries from fights, and chronic illnesses, 50 per cent of their wages up to a period of two months. The number of diseases the Law considers as professional is large and increases almost daily. Among the professional diseases, the one which has caused greatest harm to the miners and expense to the companies is silicosis. To avoid its propagation, companies should take every possible precaution that the working atmosphere is free from dust, abating this by frequent sprinkling of the workings using, wet drills and furnishing the workmen adequate protective apparatus such as respirators.

Jan 1, 1937

By Calvin C. Brown, John Bigando

Pit slopes at Cananea commonly vary from 50-55°, and some have been standing for over 25 years. Their maximum vertical extent is 700 ft. Investigation of these slopes and the rocks of which they are composed has led to the decision to experiment with final pit slope angles of up to 70". Precision blasting to obtain a smooth final pit wall with minimum raveling is an integral part of this field experiment. Presplitting, one of the precision blasting techniques, requires the drilling of a single row of holes along the limit of a pre- designed excavation. The hole spacings and charge concentrations must be experimentally determined in the field, using published data as a base (Table 1). The holes are fired prior to the main round and carry no burden and therefore produce no broken rock. Thus, it is an operational cost with no direct return on investment.

Jan 9, 1972

By E. H. Dix

Jan 1, 1940

P. W. BRIDGMAN.-Owing to a misunderstanding, I did not see Dr. McAdam's and Dr. MacGregor's remarks on my paper on Flow and Fracture (Metals Technology, December 1944, Pp. 32-38), until after their publication. Both Dr. McAdam and Dr. MacGregor speak of my analysis for the stress distribution at the neck of a tension specimen as containing several assumptions; in particular, that the strain is uniform across the section of the neck, that there is no hoop tension at the periphery, and that the plasticity conditions of von Mises hold. As far as the mathematics goes, the situation is no different in this problem of plastic flow than in a conventional problem of elasticity. That solution is unique which satisfies the boundary conditions on the stresses, the stress equations of equilibrium, and in addition the constitutive equations connecting stress and strain in the elastic case, or a corresponding set of equations, of which the von Mises relations are a special form, in the plastic case. In the particular case of the necked tension specimen I have found that there is a solution satisfying the boundary conditions, the stress equations of equilibrium, and the von Mises plasticity conditions in which the strain is uniform across the section, and there is no hoop tension at the periphery. This is therefore the solution, and the uniformity of strain and vanishing of hoop tension at the periphery are to be described as discoveries, over which the operator has no control, rather than as assumptions. The only part of the solution that can properly be described as an assumption is the von Mises plasticity condition. With regard to this it is to be noted that the condition is needed only in a much weakened form, for the analysis uses the condition only at the neck, where the strain is approximately constant. Thus, in the extreme case referred to in a footnote of my paper (p. 37, Met. Tech. Dec. 1944) the actually measured strain across the section varies from 2.4 to 2.6. Obviously it is a much weaker assumption to postulate that the von Mises condition holds in the strain range 2.4 to 2.6 than to assume it to hold for the entire range of strain from o up to 2.6, which would be necessary if the solution applied to the entire tension specimen rather than to the immediate region of the neck only. Furthermore, it is to be commented that under the special conditions of this problem the von Mises condition becomes identical with the maximum shearing-stress criterion of plastic flow; this amounts also to a weakening of the restrictions imposed by the von Mises condition. Dr. MacGregor refers to actual experiments of his own in which the strain was found not to be uniform across the neck. It is to be emphasized, however, that these were experiments on bars of rectangular section, and that the nonuniformity established was a nonuniformity around the perimeter, not a nonuniformity from the surface toward the axis. My method of solution applies only to a circular cross section. It can be said that the solution that satisfies the boundary conditions, etc., would definitely not be expected to demand a uniform strain for noncircular sections. In discussing my results, Dr. McAdam uses a definition of "flow stress" different from mine, so that the immediate applica-

Jan 1, 1945

By August Wendel

IT is a well-known fact to all Bessemer steel manufacturers using a blooming mill, that ingots show large cracks in the first few passes of the rolls, which, in the following ones, do not always roll up satisfactorily. This deficiency in the quality of the product is generally called " red-shortness," though, in the writer's opinion, mostly unjustly so. Different explanations for the said peculiarity are given by the leading authorities, each works selecting one element as a special scape-goat for the inferior quality of the ingot. The sulphur is generally first charged as being the principal cause of all mischief in this direction ; then, after ascertaining that sulphur is not higher than the average, and sometimes lower in the very worst heats, silicon has to bear its share of abuse. How and why silicon should affect the working qualities of the metal, the writer could never precisely learn, but is convinced that the doctrine of its pernicious influence is an established one with many. In cases where silicon failed to explain everything, resort was taken to calcium, aluminum, and some other known or unknown elements, without settling the difficulty; and lastly, when the skill of the chemist became exhausted, " practical men " came to the same conclusion, which many leading blast-furnace managers had arrived

Jan 1, 1876

By AIME AIME

IN RESPONSE to a request from the president- elect of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Great Britain, Mr. Calvin W. Rice, secretary of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, prepared a brief history of the joint activities of engineering societies in the United States, from which we have taken the following facts. National Societies Our first joint activities were in collection with the celebration of the eightieth birthday of "Uncle John" Fritz in 1902, and it is of interest to note that two of the members of the original celebration committee, Messrk. . Ambrose Swasey and Jesse Merrick Smith, will be members of the official deputation to England in June. Mr. Rice, also,' was .a member, of the original committee.

Jan 1, 1921

By John Hays, Hammond

IT is both a pleasure and an honor to be a guest of the Institute and I thank you, Mr. President and fellow-members, for giving. me the opportunity of meeting you this evening. My esteemed friend, President Smith, has requested me to do a bit of "reminiscing" as to the earlier years of my career as a mining engineer, which has now covered a period of fifty years. Let me reassure you by promising that my narrative will not include all the experiences I have had over that long period. You will, I trust, pardon what might seem egotistical but I do not see how a personal narrative could well be otherwise.

Jan 1, 1928

By H. R. Tunnell

EVERY ONE connected with a mine knows that it is hard to keep down the costs of moving ore from the place where it is broken to the shaft or portal. Considered broadly, the subject of handling would cover all work done in a mine, but here it has been limited to handling ore in stopes and drifts, through chutes, and on levels. Good Ventilation and a strict enforcement of rules for the prevention of dust safeguard the health of the men and lower transportation costs. HANDLING ORE IN STOPES AND DRIFTS The object of all stoping is to mine ore of good grade at low cost. In Butte, the major part of the ore is mined, from Veins dipping from 60° to the horizontal to those which are vertical, by means of, square-set, rill, -timbered-rill, and back-filling stopes. When blasted, a part of the rock is carried by gravity to the grizzlies over the chutes, the rest is shoveled. Rock, when broken in a stope, may be deflected by inclined floors or slides toward the top of a chute leading to the level below. Ore broken clean enough to ship should be carried, by the force of its fall, into a chute or as nearly into that chute as the safety of the stope and the men permits. Ore that requires sorting, about 80 per cent. of all ore mined, is caught on a grizzly and the waste picked out. Waste rock broken in a stope is used to fill that stope and should be blasted into the gob with as little handling as possible.

Jan 2, 1922

We, the undersigned, being all persons of full age and citizens of the United States and a majority residents of the State of New York, desiring to form a corporation pursuant to the provisions of the Membership Corporations Law for the purpose of incorporating, as provided in Section 5 of Article I of said law, the existing unincorporated association known , as American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, Incorporated, do hereby make, acknowledge and file this Certificate for that purpose, and do certify as follows I That the American Institute of Mining Engineers is an unincorporated association organized and existing with the object of promoting the arts and sciences connected with the economic production of the useful minerals and metals and the welfare of those employed in these industries by means of meetings for social intercourse and the reading and discussion of professional papers, and to circulate by means of publications among its members and associates the information thus obtained II That the persons duly appointed or designated to manage the affairs of said association are designated by the rules thereof Members of its Council, that the undersigned are all members of said Council as the same was constituted on the 29th day of December, 1904

Jan 1, 1952