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Esteban Hormazábal

Managing Director Chile, Corporate Consultant (Rock Mechanics and Tunnelling Services)

BASED

Santiago, Chile

CREDENTIALS

MinEng, MSc, IMCh, FAusIMM, QP

LANGUAGES

Spanish, English

Esteban Hormazábal | Mining Rock Mechanics Engineer, General Manager | SRK Chile
CONTACT ME
Esteban has extensive experience and expertise in geomechanical analysis and design for underground mining, numerical modeling, stability analysis, and slope design.

Göktuğ specializes in groundwater flow modeling (especially in Finite Element Codes), aquifer characterization including design and installation of monitoring wells, and performing aquifer tests. He has worked on international projects concerning environmental and feasibility studies related to mine dewatering, water supply, and other elements of mine hydrogeology. During his professional career Göktuğ acquired numerous experiences in design and supervision of site investigation programs as well as conceptual model development. His balanced theoretical and operational experience has lead him to develop more practical and cost-effective solutions for the industry. He has international project experience in a variety of climatic and geological conditions such as Northern Europe, South America, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, USA, Indonesia, and Turkey. He is extensively involved in pit slope optimization and dewatering studies, including 3D numerical modeling of bench-scale to pit-scale depressurization models, design and evaluation of horizontal drain performance, slope pressure monitoring designs, environmental impacts of mine dewatering and pit lake formation after closure. Göktuğ fulfills the requirements to be a “Qualified Person” for the purposes of NI 43-101 reporting in the area of hydrogeology/geology. He has recently completed a comprehensive finite element modeling project for the largest gold mining operation in the world.

Esteban's Articles

Quantifying Uncertainty in the Open Pit Slope Design
Esteban Hormazábal

This paper revisits the problem of fitting a Hoek-Brown shear failure envelope to laboratory data, proposing a methodology that accounts result from unconfined compression strength tests to characterize intact rock units and direct shear tests to characterize joints shear strengh

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Slope Design at El Romeral Pit, Chile
Esteban Hormazábal, Pedro Crignola

SRK Chile’s rock mechanics team completed a study of the slope design at the El Romeral pit located 463 km north of Santiago.

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Estimation Of Rock Mass Strength Using The Synthetic Rock Mass (SRM) Approach And Particle Flow Modelling
Esteban Hormazábal, Andres Huaman

Significant developments in numerical modelling have been achieved during the last decade, but validation of these techniques is required to build up confidence.

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Impact of the Typical Errors in Geotechnical Core Logging for the Geomechanical Design in Large Caving Mines
Andrea Russo, Edgar Montiel, Esteban Hormazábal

The aim of this paper is to show how an incorrect geotechnical rock mass assessment can affect the geotechnical and geomechanical design that will produce a negative impact on both the capex, opex and high risk for a mining project and/or operation.

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Esteban's Projects

Udokan

Udokan

Feasibility Study, Geological Modelling, and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment

Feasibility Study, Geological Modelling, and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment
Zabaikal Region, Russia
SRK advised on one of the world's largest undeveloped copper deposits with over 26 Mt of Ore Reserves.
Chuquicamata Underground Project

Chuquicamata Underground Project

Rock Mechanics Studies and Design

Rock Mechanics Studies
Chile
Nine years of technical work, including creating 50 3D numerical models and 110 construction drawings.

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Neal Rigby

Neal Rigby

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Keith Wallace

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Keith has over 35 years of underground ventilation experience.
Anton Chan

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