معصومه وطن دوست

The Lashotor, as one of the most famous Iranian stone quarries, is located in the Isfahan province. The main sedimentary sequence exposed in this area consists of Cretaceous limestones. Various discontinuities in these sequences have greatly affected the quality of the carbonate rocks. Block size in carbonate stone quarries is controlled by the pattern and distribu tion of different discontinuities including fractures and stylolites. So, focusing on fracture patterns is critical to enhancing extraction in the Lashotor quarry which faces a big problem for extraction of large profitable block size stones regarding their distributed discontinuities. Based on the prepared fracture intensity map using remote sensing data and field study, two areas of high fracture intensity were detected in the NW and SE parts of the study area. So it was suggested that future quarry must be performed within the areas with low fracture intensities. Also, 3DEC modeling was done based on geometrical attitudes of discontinuities and faces considering the dimensions of stairs in the quarry to optimize the natural stone block extraction. According to the 3DEC modeling results, the volume of the blocks in this building stone quarry has been controlled by the pattern and distribution of different discontinuity systems including fractures and stylolites. Finally, changes in the strike of the face (to N-S or NE-SW) concerning the dominant strike of the discontinuities (mainly E-W and NW-SE) can greatly increase the profitability of the natural stone blocks and decrease waste.