The determination of the final pit limits of any mining project is one of the most important challenges in a mining project. Such limits need to be defined at the beginning of the mine planning and should be reconsidered, again and routinely, during all the useful life of a mine. One of the purposes of the open pit mine exhaustion plan is the determination of the optimal final pit, based on an economic model subject to technical restrictions and aimed to maximize the net present value. LERCHS e GROSSMANN (1965) published the first specific algorithm related to the theme. This algorithm has been accepted as standard in comparison to other equivalent algorithms which have been proposed, because it solves the corresponding problem, according to the graph theory, of the minimum cut and maximum flow. Other final pit optimization algorithms are presented in this study too. The authors developed an academic program for pit optimization and the principles of this program are presented in this article.
planning; mining; optimization; open pit
