Experimental evaluation of a distributed Brillouin sensing system for detection of relative movement of rock blocks in underground mining

Underground mining in highly stressed, hard rock masses is commonly accompanied by seismic events that are located close to mining, near active stopes and other excavations, most frequently within one diameter of the excavation boundary. However, as the extraction ratio increases or mines progress to greater depths, remote events have been observed at large distances from active mining, where the direct mining related stress changes are negligible. Events in different mining blocks cannot be explained by models involving stress redistribution processes alone.