Technical Note: Dynamic Anisotropy – Functional Overview

Reference: TN00216 (James to complete)

Created: 1st February 2014

Last modified: 6th February 2017

1. IMPROVE YOUR GRADE ESTIMATION WITH DYNAMIC ANISOTROPY

The Dynamic Anisotropy option has been added to Studio 3 which allows the anisotropy rotation
angles for defining the search volume and variogram models to be defined individually for each
cell in the model. Thus the search volume is oriented precisely and follows the trend of the
mineralization, which leads to improved grade estimates.

The method is particularly suitable for gently folded and rolling orebodies where previously an
average direction of mineralization would have been used. This is illustrated in the figure below
which shows how the search ellipses follow the mineralization.

Not only does the search ellipse follow the mineralization but the same anisotropy angles are
used for calculating the sample weights for inverse power of distance and for the rotation of
the variogram model for kriging. The upper cross section in the figure below shows the grade
profile using a horizontal search ellipse and the lower cross section using dynamic anisotropy.
The improvement is obvious!

In can be shown that a misalignment of the search volume by just a few degrees can cause
the interpolation of ore into waste and waste into ore leading to incorrect estimates. It is
therefore very important to get the orientation of the search volume correctly aligned.

In the case of highly folded or deformed orebodies Studio’s Unfold option still provides the
optimal solution, but for more gently folded cases the Dynamic Anisotropy method provides a
fast and easy to use option.

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Dynamic Anisotropy is a maintenance upgrade to Studio’s Enhanced Geostatistics module and
has been implemented as an enhancement to the ESTIMA command together with two new
commands to assist with the processing of the orientation data.

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