DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Responsive to the communication dated 1/22/2026
Claims 1, 3, 7, 8, 14 are amended.
Claim 9, 19 are cancelled.
Claims 1 – 8, 10 – 18, 20 - 28 are presented for examination.
Continued Examination
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 1/22/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The Applicant has amended the claims. The previous rejection is withdrawn; however, a new ground of rejection is presented below in the body of the Office action.
End Response to Arguments
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(d):
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, fourth paragraph:
Subject to the following paragraph [i.e., the fifth paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112], a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claim 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(d) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, 4th paragraph, as being of improper dependent form for failing to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which it depends, or for failing to include all the limitations of the claim upon which it depends.
Claim 21 recites: “the computing apparatus of claim a” which is improper because claim “a” is not a prior claim from which claim 21 may depend.
Applicant may cancel the claim(s), amend the claim(s) to place the claim(s) in proper dependent form, rewrite the claim(s) in independent form, or present a sufficient showing that the dependent claim(s) complies with the statutory requirements.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 (Ore Loss and Dilution Studies of Surface Mineral Blasting with 3D Distinct Element Heave Models, SAND2016-1317C) in view of Teng_2018 (US 2018/0239848 A1) in view of Mustafa_2019 (Particula: A simulator tool for computational rock physics of granular media, Geophysics, VOL. 84 No. 3 2019) in view of Yang_2011 (Characterization of Fragment Size vis-à-vis delay timing in quarry blasts, Powder Technology, 2011) in view of Dornfeld_2006 (Gardner, J. D, & Dornfeld, D. (2006). Finite Element Modeling of Drilling Using DEFORM. UC Berkeley: Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9xg0g32g).
Claim 1. Preece_2015 makes obvious “instructions that (page 1 abstract: “… 3D distinct element models and parallel processing…”; page 1 introduction: “… 3D distinct element… the algorithm… to parallel processing… 3D ore movement simulations…”), receive a blast plan comprising blasthole data (page 1 abstract par 2 – 3: “… explosive deck delay timing… in this paper different blast design delay timing options are examined with models that include hundreds of blastholes…”; page 2: “… burden and spacing of the blast pattern…”; Figure 2 illustrates 150 marked blast holes. NOTE: blasthole data includes, burdens, timing,) and blasting site data, wherein the blasting site data comprises [assay data] indicative of geological properties within a blast site (page 1 abstract par 2: “… ore bodies are mapped to surface mineral mining through assay of the drill cuttings from each blasthole. This data is assimilated into surface polygons…”; page 2: “… it is well understood that mining occurs in a geologic media and that ore bodies are anything but regular or straight. Typically, assays are taken on drill cuttings and used to define or and waste blocks…”); generate a site model for the blast site based on the blast plan, the site model comprising a plurality of elements (page 2: “… the model generator, ROCKMESH, uses the blast design to create the hexagonal close-pack spherical array. A block of spheres is created where the blast modeling will occur…” NOTE: the blast design is the claimed blast plan. The claimed site model is the close-packed array.),
and simulate a blast using the site model and the plurality of elements ( page 1 introduction: “… 3D ore movement simulations…”; page 2 par 2: “… Simulations using three different blast patterns delay timing will be presented…”; Page 2 par 4: “… define ore polygons on the model… their movement can be tracked during simulation… ore polygons…”; page 4 par 1: “… DMC-3D Simulations… Figure 4 illustrates the blasting inducted velocity at four times in a simulation… the blast movement…”; page 13 conclusions: “… based on… three-dimensional heave modeling… modeling of rock blasting induced heave with parallel processing… parallel simulations…”);
While Preece_2015 teaches modeling software (e.g., ROCKMESH) executed using parallel processing; and while the teaching of software executed with parallel processing might properly make obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art “A computer apparatus, the computing apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory storing” instructions that, “when executed by the processor, configure the apparatus to:”, Preece_2015 does not EXPLICITLY recite: “A computer apparatus, the computing apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory storing” instructions that, “when executed by the processor, configure the apparatus to:”,
while Preece_2015 teaches “… rock blasting are fragmentation and movement of geomaterials. Movement/flow of the blasted rock … polygons during blasting… movement of ore polygons…” which teaches rock elements that have shape this does not explicitly teach that the rock shapes represent rock “mass”
While Preece_2015 teaches to perform assays of the blast site and to assimilate the assay data into the polygons and because “it is well understood that mining occurs in geologic media and that ore bodies are anything but regular” assays are “typically” used to define ore blocks, and while this may be properly found to make obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art the limitations of: wherein the blasting site data comprises “geological data” indicative of geological properties within a blast site. This is because “assay data” is geological data and the above citation clearly teaches to assimilate that data. Nevertheless; Preece_2015 does not explicitly recite “geological data” indicative of geological properties.
Additionally, Preece_2015 teaches (page 2 – 3) “a capability has been developed to define ore polygons on the model ground surface and extending vertically through the model. All spheres within the polygon are marked as ore so their movement can be tracked during simulation. In this case two simple ore polygons, rectangular and diagonal… are defined and treated in different simulations… The ore polygon algorithm is capable of treating any shape that can be defined as a series of points…”. The above clearly teaches shapes of ore elements and teaches that the shapes can be any shape and explicitly illustrates selecting spheres and polygons uses a ore elements. Additionally, Preece_2015 (abstract) teaches “ore bodies are mapped in surface mineral mining through assay of the drill cuttings from each blasthole. This data is assimilated into surface polygons that define ore and waste…”. This clearly teaches to “assimilate” geological data from assays in polygons that define the ore. While this may properly imply to those of ordinary skill in the art that assimilating data into the ore polygons includes selecting the shape of the polygon to match the shape of the ore according to the assay data because doing so would make the simulation more realistic and according provide more realistic results, Preece_2015 does not EXPLICITLY recite to select the shape based on geological data. Accordingly Preece_2015 does not EXPLICITLY recite the phrase: “Wherein, a shape of each of the plurality of elements is selected based on the geological data”.
Preece_2015 also does not recite: “truncate elements that cross a blasthole.”
Preece_2015 does not explicitly recite “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release timing for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements is front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time.”
Nevertheless; Teng_2018 makes obvious “A computer apparatus, the computing apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory storing” instructions that, “when executed by the processor, configure the apparatus to” (FIG. 6; par 6: “… computer system having at least one application module installed thereon…”; par 30: “… one or more computer systems capable of carrying out the functionality described herein. An example of a computer system 600 is shown in FIG. 6. The computer system 600 includes one or more processors, such as processor 604. The processor is connected to a computer system internal communication bus 602. Various software embodiments are described…”; par 31: “computer system 600 also include a main memory 608… RAM… may also include a secondary memory 610…”; par 32: “… computer programs or other instructions to be loaded into computer system 600… computer system 600 is controlled and coordinated by operating system (OS) software, which performs tasks…”).
Preece_2015 and Teng_2018 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulations. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Teng_2018. The rationale for doing so would have been the Preece_2015 teaches to perform ore movement (i.e., blast/heave) simulations using a processor and Teng_2018 teaches a computer system with a processor that performs blast simulations. Therefore; it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Teng_2018 for the benefit of having a computer capable of performing ore movement simulation to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Teng_2018 does not explicitly teach “geological data” indicative of geological properties nor “Wherein, a shape of each of the plurality of elements is selected based on the geological data” nor “truncate elements that cross a blasthole.”
Mustafa_2019 makes obvious “geological data” indicative of geological properties and “Wherein, a shape of each of the plurality of elements is selected based on the geological data” (F85 – F86: “… the physical properties of the grains and their arrangement orientation, and size affect several processes and properties such as (1) effective elastic moduli, which controls seismic wave propagation… rock porosity and permeability… traditionally used in geophysics fail to predict the stress-dependent elastic properties of granular media because they do not account for the heterogeneous distribution of contacts and stress heterogeneity… finite-element simulations that the effective permittivity of a rock responds differently to changes in pore-size variation, shape variation, distribution, and arrangement… natural granular media are heterogeneous… grain packs have specific characteristics… such as void fraction or porosity, permeability, and pore body and throat-size distributions… the software is flexible enough to generate a variety of grain packs with different grain shapes, grain-size distributions, and grading… to create non-spherical irregularity shaped grains… prescribed shape and size distributions are modeled and compared with numerical and experimental measurements… the output of this method can be used as input… studies have shown that grain pack’s physical properties such as porosity, permeability, and the elastic bulk modulus are dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent grains…” F90 – F91: “… each grain group has a specific shape, property (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution), and prescribed grain-size distribution… defined as spherical, nonspherical (cubes, cylinders, ellipsoids, etc), and nonspherical irregular… assemble the grain pack… a virtual container (a rectangular box or cylinder…” F92: “… compared the porosity estimates obtained from the simulations with published numerical and experimental measurements in the literatures… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quartz mineral…” F93: “…. The porosity, approximately 0.36… simulate the grain packs under confining pressure, which will result in lower porosity… the porosity as a function of Perlin noise amplitude is illustrated in Figure 14… this indicates that a little bit of surface roughness, or angularity of the grains, which is observed in most real granular media, greatly affects the expected dense packing porosity… the porosity as a function of the Perlin noise amplitude…”
NOTE: the above teaches that it is known that geological data such as porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus is dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent geology (i.e., shape). The above also teach to modify the shape of simulated finite elements used in simulation to match the geologic data (i.e., porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus) and that the shapes can be non-spherical (i.e., cubes, polygons, etc.).
Preece_2015 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulations. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Mustafa_2019
The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to perform an assay for the blast geology and to incorporate assay data into the simulation. Mustafa_2019 teaches to modify the shape of the simulated finite elements based on geologic data such as porosity, permeability, elasticity, etc.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Mustafa_2019 for the benefit of having a simulation that more accurately produces results that match real life to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Yang_2011, however, makes obvious “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release timing for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements is front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time” (page 120 introduction: “… in an ideal blast, the burden on any row should be well on move by the time the next row is fired. Field trials revealed that the rock from the previous row should be moved by one third of the burden distance before the next row is fired [5]…”).
Preece_2015 and Yang_2011 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called blasting. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Yang_2011. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to model blasting heave and Yang_2011 teaches that the ideal blast has a timing where the burden on any row should be well on move by the time the next row is fired and further teaches that it has been shown in field trials (real world) to use one third of the burden distance. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Yang_2011 for the benefit of modeling more accurately the real-world scenario that is ideal for moving material to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Dornfeld_2006 makes obvious “truncate elements that cross a blasthole” (page 2: “… during the drilling simulation, the cutting edges of the drill bit are shearing the workpiece material… maximum plastic strain model assumes that material separation occurs when an element reaches a critical plastic strain for the material model of the workpiece. The element is then split into two elements and a chip is formed… the maximum plastic strain criterion has been implemented…”).
Preece_2015 and Dornfeld_2006 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulation. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Dornfeld_2006. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to have polygons in a region what includes boreholes (page 2: “… borehole diameter… 150 blastholes…”) Dornfeld_2006 teaches to truncate elements that experience critical plastic strain when a drill bit is used to make boreholes through materials. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Dornfeld_2006 for the benefit of having ore elements that have shapes that conform to the blast zone including conforming to the boreholes used as blastholes thereby achieving a more accurate simulation because it more accurately represents the shapes found in the blast zone to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claims 28, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Teng_2018 (US 2018/0239848 A1) in view of Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Dornfeld_2006 in view of Nguyen_2019 (Aspherical particle models for moleculare dynamics simulation, May 22, 2019 Computer Physics Communication 243 (2019) 12 – 24)
Claim 28. Preece_2015 makes obvious “wherein each element represents a rock , and each element has a shape (page 1: “… rock blasting are fragmentation and movement of geomaterials. Movement/flow of the blasted rock … polygons during blasting… movement of ore polygons…”; page 2: “… hexagonal close-pack spherical array… NOTE: polygons and spheres are shapes. The shapes are for “rock” and “ore”)
Also, while Preece_2015 teaches to form polygonal shapes and teaches spheres, and while this makes obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art the coupling of arcs because a sphere is comprised of coupled arcs, Preece_2015 does not explicitly recite: “formed by connecting endpoints of one or more lines with arcs such that the endpoints of the one or more lines are indirectly coupled via the arcs,
Nruyen_2019; however, makes obvious shapes “formed by connecting endpoints of one or more lines with arcs such that the endpoints of the one or more lines are indirectly coupled via the arcs” (page 14 Fig. 1 elements C, d; Fig. 2 NOTE: the figures illustrate rounded vertices (i.e., arcs) that connect one or more lines.) and that the shapes represent “mass” (page 13: “… the center-of-mass… inertia of a rigid body depend on its distribution of mass…” page 14: “… masses which move in a ballistic fashion…”; page 15: “aspherical DEM particles… aspherical single-particle models like those in (C-e) of Fig. 1… particle’s center of mass…”; Page 17 section 4:
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Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called particle motion simulation. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to simulate particle motion. Nguyen_2019 teaches that for studies where particle shape plays a vital role more complex shapes are required (abstract) and teaches for “larger particles” discrete element models (DEMs) are “widely used“ and “DEMs can also have faceted particles with generalized aspherical shapes defined by geometrical features such as vertices, edges and faces” (introduction). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 for the benefit of using the “widely used” element models for larger particles such as rocks to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claim 2. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious “wherein a radius of each arc increases based on one or more of movement of a corresponding element, rotation of the corresponding element, and collisions of the corresponding element” (par 15 – 16: “… more generally body-style particles can be used to model particles that need to store “state” form one timestep to the next… a variable-radius particle… deformable particles could be implemented in this manner, where external stresses alter the shape of a particle (stored as perturbation parameters to an equilibrium spherical or ellipsoidal shape) and could result in particle fracture, depending on threshold parameters and its stress history…” NOTE: the claim elements are interpreted according to the instant specification at paragraph 124 which discloses that increase in radius is due to rolling and break down where the element becomes more round. In other words, as the simulation occurs from time step to time step, outside forces effect the element through stresses that occur during rolling and sliding.).
Claim 3. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious “wherein simulating the blast comprises detect contact between neighboring elements, wherein detecting contact comprises: Detect arc-to-arc contact between the neighboring elements; and Detect arc-to-line contact between the neighboring elements” (Fig. 2).
Claim 4. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious “wherein detecting arc-to-arc contact between the neighboring elements comprises comparing a distance between arc center points of two arcs of the neighboring elements to a sum of radiuses of the two arcs of the neighboring elements, wherein contact is detected when the sum is greater than the distance” (FIG. 2)
Claim 5. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious wherein detecting arc-to-line contact between the neighboring elements comprises compare a distance between a line of a first element and an arc center of an arc of a second element to a radius of the arc of the second element, wherein contact is detected when the radius is greater than the distance” (FIG. 2)
Claim 6. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious wherein simulating the blast comprises calculating a force applied to each element by contacting neighbor elements, wherein the force is calculated based on a contact overlap and is applied to arc center points” (Fig. 2: “…particles push off each other when they are in contact (overlap of blue and grey regions)…”; page 17: “… compute the force and torque acting on all constituent particles… sum forces and torques over the constituent particles… update the position, orientation, and translation/rotational velocity for each body…”)
Claims 7. Teng_2018 makes obvious “wherein simulating the blast comprises a timestamp simulation that iteratively steps through time, wherein for each timestep of the simulation the method further comprises (par 1: “… method and system for performing time-marching simulation of a physical domain in response to an explosion…”; par 6: “… numerically calculated domain behaviors in response to the explosion are obtained by conducting a time-marching simulation… as a result of combined interactions…”)
Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious Search the site model for arc-to-arc contacts and arc-to-line contact; determine forces resulting from the arc-to-arc contacts and the arc-to-line contacts; Determine moments for each element; Sum the moments and the forces for each element; and Move each element based on total forces and moments to new positions wherein the new positions are used during a next timestep (Fig. 2: “…particles push off each other when they are in contact (overlap of blue and grey regions)…”; page 16: “… time step…”; page 17: “… compute the force and torque acting on all constituent particles… sum forces and torques over the constituent particles… update the position, orientation, and translation/rotational velocity for each body…”; page 18: “… position and velocity, moments of inertia, force, torque, angular momentum…”).
Claims 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Teng_2018 in view of Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Dornfeld_2006
Claim 8. Preece_2015 makes obvious “A method for determining an output of a blast modeling moving objects for a blast, the method comprising (page 1 introduction: “… 3D distinct element… the algorithm… to parallel processing… 3D ore movement simulations…”): receiving a blast plan for the blast, the blast plan comprising blasthole data (page 1 abstract par 2 – 3: “… explosive deck delay timing… in this paper different blast design delay timing options are examined with models that include hundreds of blastholes…”; page 2: “… burden and spacing of the blast pattern…”; Figure 2 illustrates 150 marked blast holes. NOTE: blasthole data includes, burdens, timing,) and blasting site data wherein the blasting site data comprises [assay data] indicative of geological properties within a blast site (page 1 abstract par 2: “… ore bodies are mapped to surface mineral mining through assay of the drill cuttings from each blasthole. This data is assimilated into surface polygons…”; page 2: “… it is well understood that mining occurs in a geologic media and that ore bodies are anything but regular or straight. Typically, assays are taken on drill cuttings and used to define or and waste blocks…”); generating, a model for the blast site based on the blast plan, the model comprising a plurality of elements (page 2: “… the model generator, ROCKMESH, uses the blast design to create the hexagonal close-pack spherical array. A block of spheres is created where the blast modeling will occur…”)
And determining, and outcome of the blast by simulating movement of the plurality of elements caused by blasting according to the blast plan, wherein (Fig. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14)
Simulating movement of the plurality of elements in the blast ( page 1 introduction: “… 3D ore movement simulations…”; page 2 par 2: “… Simulations using three different blast patterns delay timing will be presented…”; Page 2 par 4: “… define ore polygons on the model… their movement can be tracked during simulation… ore polygons…”; page 4 par 1: “… DMC-3D Simulations… Figure 4 illustrates the blasting inducted velocity at four times in a simulation… the blast movement…”; page 13 conclusions: “… based on… three-dimensional heave modeling… modeling of rock blasting induced heave with parallel processing… parallel simulations…”)
While Preece_2015 teaches to perform assays of the blast site and to assimilate the assay data into the polygons and because “it is well understood that mining occurs in geologic media and that ore bodies are anything but regular” assays are “typically” used to define ore blocks, and while this may be properly found to make obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art the limitations of: wherein the blasting site data comprises “geological data” indicative of geological properties within a blast site. This is because “assay data” is geological data and the above citation clearly teaches to assimilate that data. Nevertheless; Preece_2015 does not explicitly recite “geological data” indicative of geological properties.
Additionally, Preece_2015 teaches (page 2 – 3) “a capability has been developed to define ore polygons on the model ground surface and extending vertically through the model. All spheres within the polygon are marked as ore so their movement can be tracked during simulation. In this case two simple ore polygons, rectangular and diagonal… are defined and treated in different simulations… The ore polygon algorithm is capable of treating any shape that can be defined as a series of points…”. The above clearly teaches shapes of ore elements and teaches that the shapes can be any shape and explicitly illustrates selecting spheres and polygons uses a ore elements. Additionally, Preece_2015 (abstract) teaches “ore bodies are mapped in surface mineral mining through assay of the drill cuttings from each blasthole. This data is assimilated into surface polygons that define ore and waste…”. This clearly teaches to “assimilate” geological data from assays in polygons that define the ore. While this may properly imply to those of ordinary skill in the art that assimilating data into the ore polygons includes selecting the shape of the polygon to match the shape of the ore according to the assay data because doing so would make the simulation more realistic and according provide more realistic results, Preece_2015 does not EXPLICITLY recite to select the shape based on geological data. Accordingly Preece_2015 does not EXPLICITLY recite the phrase: “Wherein, a shape of each of the plurality of elements is selected based on the geological data”.
Preece_2015 also does not recite: “truncate elements that cross a blasthole.”
Preece_2015 does not explicitly teach “computer implemented” nor “using a processor.”
Preece_2015 does not explicitly teach “Comprises:
Identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements; wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time
Detecting contacts between neighboring elements”
Nruyen_2019; however, makes obvious shapes detecting contacts between neighboring elements (Fig. 2).
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called particle motion simulation. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to simulate particle motion. Nguyen_2019 teaches that for studies where particle shape plays a vital role more complex shapes are required (abstract) and teaches for “larger particles” discrete element models (DEMs) are “widely used“ and “DEMs can also have faceted particles with generalized aspherical shapes defined by geometrical features such as vertices, edges and faces” (introduction). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 for the benefit of using the “widely used” element models for larger particles such as rocks to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 does not teach “geological data” indicative of geological properties nor “Wherein, a shape of each of the plurality of elements is selected based on the geological data” nor “truncate elements that cross a blasthole” nor “computer implemented” nor “using a processor” nor “Comprises:
Identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements; wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time”
Teng_2018 makes obvious “computer implemented” and “using a processor.”
(FIG. 6; par 6: “… computer system having at least one application module installed thereon…”; par 30: “… one or more computer systems capable of carrying out the functionality described herein. An example of a computer system 600 is shown in FIG. 6. The computer system 600 includes one or more processors, such as processor 604. The processor is connected to a computer system internal communication bus 602. Various software embodiments are described…”; par 31: “computer system 600 also include a main memory 608… RAM… may also include a secondary memory 610…”; par 32: “… computer programs or other instructions to be loaded into computer system 600… computer system 600 is controlled and coordinated by operating system (OS) software, which performs tasks…”).
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulations. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Teng_2018. The rationale for doing so would have been the Preece_2015 teaches to perform ore movement (i.e., blast/heave) simulations using a processor and Teng_2018 teaches a computer system with a processor that performs blast simulations. Therefore; it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Teng_2018 for the benefit of having a computer capable of performing ore movement simulation to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 does not explicitly teach “geological data” indicative of geological properties and “wherein, the shape of the element is selected based on the geological data”
nor “Comprises:
Identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements; wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time”
Mustafa_2019 makes obvious “geological data” indicative of geological properties and “Wherein, a shape of each of the plurality of elements is selected based on the geological data” (F85 – F86: “… the physical properties of the grains and their arrangement orientation, and size affect several processes and properties such as (1) effective elastic moduli, which controls seismic wave propagation… rock porosity and permeability… traditionally used in geophysics fail to predict the stress-dependent elastic properties of granular media because they do not account for the heterogeneous distribution of contacts and stress heterogeneity… finite-element simulations that the effective permittivity of a rock responds differently to changes in pore-size variation, shape variation, distribution, and arrangement… natural granular media are heterogeneous… grain packs have specific characteristics… such as void fraction or porosity, permeability, and pore body and throat-size distributions… the software is flexible enough to generate a variety of grain packs with different grain shapes, grain-size distributions, and grading… to create non-spherical irregularity shaped grains… prescribed shape and size distributions are modeled and compared with numerical and experimental measurements… the output of this method can be used as input… studies have shown that grain pack’s physical properties such as porosity, permeability, and the elastic bulk modulus are dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent grains…” F90 – F91: “… each grain group has a specific shape, property (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution), and prescribed grain-size distribution… defined as spherical, nonspherical (cubes, cylinders, ellipsoids, etc), and nonspherical irregular… assemble the grain pack… a virtual container (a rectangular box or cylinder…” F92: “… compared the porosity estimates obtained from the simulations with published numerical and experimental measurements in the literatures… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quartz mineral…” F93: “…. The porosity, approximately 0.36… simulate the grain packs under confining pressure, which will result in lower porosity… the porosity as a function of Perlin noise amplitude is illustrated in Figure 14… this indicates that a little bit of surface roughness, or angularity of the grains, which is observed in most real granular media, greatly affects the expected dense packing porosity… the porosity as a function of the Perlin noise amplitude…”
NOTE: the above teaches that it is known that geological data such as porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus is dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent geology (i.e., shape). The above also teach to modify the shape of simulated finite elements used in simulation to match the geologic data (i.e., porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus) and that the shapes can be non-spherical (i.e., cubes, polygons, etc.).
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulations. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Mustafa_2019
The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to perform an assay for the blast geology and to incorporate assay data into the simulation. Mustafa_2019 teaches to modify the shape of the simulated finite elements based on geologic data such as porosity, permeability, elasticity, etc.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Mustafa_2019 for the benefit of having a simulation that more accurately produces results that match real life to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 does not teach “Comprises:
Identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements; wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time”
Yang_2011, however, makes obvious “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release timing for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements is front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time” (page 120 introduction: “… in an ideal blast, the burden on any row should be well on move by the time the next row is fired. Field trials revealed that the rock from the previous row should be moved by one third of the burden distance before the next row is fired [5]…”).
Preece_2015 and Yang_2011 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called blasting. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Yang_2011. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to model blasting heave and Yang_2011 teaches that the ideal blast has a timing where the burden on any row should be well on move by the time the next row is fired and further teaches that it has been shown in field trials (real world) to use one third of the burden distance. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Yang_2011 for the benefit of modeling more accurately the real-world scenario that is ideal for moving material to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Dornfeld_2006 makes obvious “truncate elements that cross a blasthole” (page 2: “… during the drilling simulation, the cutting edges of the drill bit are shearing the workpiece material… maximum plastic strain model assumes that material separation occurs when an element reaches a critical plastic strain for the material model of the workpiece. The element is then split into two elements and a chip is formed… the maximum plastic strain criterion has been implemented…”).
Preece_2015 and Dornfeld_2006 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulation. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Dornfeld_2006. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to have polygons in a region what includes boreholes (page 2: “… borehole diameter… 150 blastholes…”) Dornfeld_2006 teaches to truncate elements that experience critical plastic strain when a drill bit is used to make boreholes through materials. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Dornfeld_2006 for the benefit of having ore elements that have shapes that conform to the blast zone including conforming to the boreholes used as blastholes thereby achieving a more accurate simulation because it more accurately represents the shapes found in the blast zone to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claim 10. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious “wherein detecting the contact between neighboring element comprises detecting arc-to-arc contact between the neighboring elements comprises comparing a distance between arc center points of two arcs of the neighboring elements to a sum of radiuses of the two arcs of the neighboring elements, wherein contact is detected when the sum is greater than the distance” (Fig. 2).
Claim 11. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious “wherein detecting the contact between neighboring elements comprises detecting arc-to-line contact between the neighboring elements comprises comparing a distance between a line of a first element and an arc of an arc of a second element to a radius of the arc of the second element, wherein contact is detected when the radius is greater than the distance” (Fig. 2).
Claim 12. Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious “wherein simulating the movement comprises calculating a force applied to each element by contacting neighbor elements, wherein the force is calculated based on a contact overlap” (Fig. 2: “…particles push off each other when they are in contact (overlap of blue and grey regions)…”; page 17: “… compute the force and torque acting on all constituent particles… sum forces and torques over the constituent particles… update the position, orientation, and translation/rotational velocity for each body…”).
Claim 13. Teng_2018 makes obvious “wherein simulating the blast comprises a timestamp simulation that iteratively steps through time, wherein for each timestep of the simulation the method further comprises (par 1: “… method and system for performing time-marching simulation of a physical domain in response to an explosion…”; par 6: “… numerically calculated domain behaviors in response to the explosion are obtained by conducting a time-marching simulation… as a result of combined interactions…”)
Nguyen_2019 also makes obvious Search the site model for contacts; determine forces resulting from the contacts; Determine moments for each element; Sum the moments and the forces for each element; and Move each element based on total forces and moments to new positions wherein the new positions are used during a next timestep (Fig. 2: “…particles push off each other when they are in contact (overlap of blue and grey regions)…”; page 16: “… time step…”; page 17: “… compute the force and torque acting on all constituent particles… sum forces and torques over the constituent particles… update the position, orientation, and translation/rotational velocity for each body…”; page 18: “… position and velocity, moments of inertia, force, torque, angular momentum…”).
Claims 21, 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Teng_2018 in view of Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 n view of Dornfeld_2006 in view of Giesecke_2017 (Technical Drawing with Engineering Graphics, 15th Edition 2017).
Claim 21, 23. Giesecke_2017 makes obvious Giesecke_2017 makes obvious “wherein each element is stored in the memory in a data structure comprising a center point for each arc” (Chapter Geometry for Modeling and Design page 2 “the CAD database… in the CAD database…” page 3: “a CAD file, a circle is often stored as a center point and a radius…” page 6: “… Arcs An arc is a portion of a circle. An arc can be defined by specifying any of the following… a center, radius, and angle measure… a center, radius, a chord length, a center, radius, and arc length, the end points and radius, the endpoints and a chord length, the endpoints and arc length…” NOTE: the above teaches that geometry with a radius is modeled by specifying a center for the radius and geometry data can be stored in a file or database.) wherein, for each arc, the data structure comprises at least one of an arc angle, an arc radius and at least one arc endpoint” (Chapter Geometry for Modeling and Design page 6: “… Arcs An arc is a portion of a circle. An arc can be defined by specifying any of the following… a center, radius, and angle measure… a center, radius, a chord length, a center, radius, and arc length, the end points and radius, the endpoints and a chord length, the endpoints and arc length…”)
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 and Giesecke_2017 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called modeling. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Giesecke_2017 and Teng_2018. The rationale for doing so would have been Teng_2018 teaches to have a computer with a memory the stores and processes geometric shapes (par 31: “main memory”; par 32: “… data to be transferred from the removable storage 622 to computer system 600…”; par 37: “… the main memory 608 may be loaded with one or more application modules… the results are computed and stored in the secondary memory…”; page 4 Claim 8: “… the method of claim 1… comprises a geometric shape of the blast source…” par 22: “… it can be any arbitrary shape. The invention supports different combinations…”; par 24: “… any given geometric shape, for example, circle… or sphere or cylinder…”) and Giesecke_2017 teaches that geometry for modeling is stored in databases and file and that geometric shapes such as arcs are defined by their center. Therefore; it would have been obvious to combine Giesecke_2017 the center of an arc that defines an arc and the memory of Teng_2018 used to store and process geometric information for the benefit of having a method of defining information about geometric structures that have arc in computer memory to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Further, in combination, the prior art makes “wherein the arc radius is based on the geologic data” obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art because Mustafa_2019 teaches that the shapes can be modified to match geologic properties such as porosity. See Figure 4 where the curves of the finite element particle change according to Perlin noise amplitude which can be related to porosity.
Claim 22, 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Teng_2018 in view of Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 n view of Dornfeld_2006 in view of Stewart_2000 (Rigid-Body Dynamics with Friction and Impact, SIAM REVIEW Vol. 42, No. 1, pp 3 – 39) in view of Weiss_2018 (US 2018/0247003).
Claim 22, 24. While Preece_2015 explicitly teaches to perform geologic assays and to incorporate the assay data into simulation polygons (abstract: “… Ore bodies are mapped in surface mineral mining through assay of the drill cuttings from each blasthole. This data is assimilated into surface polygons…”), Preece_2015 does not explicitly teach to incorporate, for example, rock type mass or friction data.
Mustafa_2019 makes obvious “wherein a shape type of each of the plurality of elements is based on the geological data (F85 – F86: “… the physical properties of the grains and their arrangement orientation, and size affect several processes and properties such as (1) effective elastic moduli, which controls seismic wave propagation… rock porosity and permeability… traditionally used in geophysics fail to predict the stress-dependent elastic properties of granular media because they do not account for the heterogeneous distribution of contacts and stress heterogeneity… finite-element simulations that the effective permittivity of a rock responds differently to changes in pore-size variation, shape variation, distribution, and arrangement… natural granular media are heterogeneous… grain packs have specific characteristics… such as void fraction or porosity, permeability, and pore body and throat-size distributions… the software is flexible enough to generate a variety of grain packs with different grain shapes, grain-size distributions, and grading… to create non-spherical irregularity shaped grains… prescribed shape and size distributions are modeled and compared with numerical and experimental measurements… the output of this method can be used as input… studies have shown that grain pack’s physical properties such as porosity, permeability, and the elastic bulk modulus are dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent grains…” F90 – F91: “… each grain group has a specific shape, property (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution), and prescribed grain-size distribution… defined as spherical, nonspherical (cubes, cylinders, ellipsoids, etc), and nonspherical irregular… assemble the grain pack… a virtual container (a rectangular box or cylinder…” F92: “… compared the porosity estimates obtained from the simulations with published numerical and experimental measurements in the literatures… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quartz mineral…” F93: “…. The porosity, approximately 0.36… simulate the grain packs under confining pressure, which will result in lower porosity… the porosity as a function of Perlin noise amplitude is illustrated in Figure 14… this indicates that a little bit of surface roughness, or angularity of the grains, which is observed in most real granular media, greatly affects the expected dense packing porosity… the porosity as a function of the Perlin noise amplitude…”
NOTE: the above teaches that it is known that geological data such as porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus is dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent geology (i.e., shape). The above also teach to modify the shape of simulated finite elements used in simulation to match the geologic data (i.e., porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus) and that the shapes can be non-spherical (i.e., cubes, polygons, etc.), , and wherein simulating the blast comprises determining movement of the plurality of elements based on a mass of each of the plurality of elements (F88: “the rigid body contact model… consider n rigid bodies with position/rotation… external forces (such as gravity) and torque… and masses/rotation inertia M
∈
R6nX6n . The collision detection identifies the m contacts between rigid bodies… function of the position vector… solved in the system of Newton’s second law of motion … change in momentum… equation 1, 2, 4 … the updated new velocity… and position… can be calculated… friction is implemented using an approximation to the Coulomb friction model…”), wherein the mass is determined based on the size of the elements, the geological data (F92: “… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quarts mineral…” F90: “… each grain group has specific shape, properties (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution” NOTE: density = mass/volume which makes mass being based on the size of an element obvious because the volume of an element indicates the size of the element. ), , wherein the determining movement of the plurality of elements comprises: detecting a contact between two neighboring elements; and generating a temporary bond between the two neighboring elements to simulate friction (F88: “the rigid body contact model… consider n rigid bodies with position/rotation… external forces (such as gravity) and torque… and masses/rotation inertia M
∈
R6nX6n . The collision detection identifies the m contacts between rigid bodies… function of the position vector… solved in the system of Newton’s second law of motion … change in momentum… equation 1, 2, 4 … the updated new velocity… and position… can be calculated… friction is implemented using an approximation to the Coulomb friction model…” F90: “… each grain group has specific shape, properties (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution), caused by rough rocks (Fig 2, 4 illustrate making grains rough.), wherein the rock type is determined based on the geologic data (F92: “… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quarts mineral…” F90: “… each grain group has specific shape, properties (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution” NOTE: this teaches that types of rocks have specific geologic properties such as quarts has density of 2.65 g/cm3 and that grains (i.e., elements) are defined with specific properties such as density and friction making it obvious that, for example, quarts simulation elements would be defined based upon its density or mass or friction properties of quarts.)
While Mustafa_2019 at page F93 teaches to “simulate the grain packs under confining pressures” and that doing so “will result ins lower porosity” and because confining pressure, also known as lithostatic pressure, is the stress exerted on rocks due to weight on the overlying rocks and sediments is directly related to rock burden it may properly be found that “wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements is based on distance of the element to a blasthole in the blast plan” and “and spacing of the plurality of blastholes in the blast plan,” would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. Nevertheless, Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 does not explicitly teach “wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements is based on distance of the element to a blasthole in the blast plan” nor “and spacing of the plurality of blastholes in the blast plan,” nor “wherein the temporary bond is determined based on a type of rock associated with the two neighboring elements”
Stewart_2000 makes obvious “, and Wherein simulating the blast comprises determining movement of the plurality of elements based on a mass of each of the plurality of elements (page 16 2.1.2: “… contact and inelastic impacts can be formulated as follows. The data of the problem consists of the mass matrix (M(q), the contact constraint (f(q), its gradient n(q) =
∇
(f(q), the matrix of direction vectors … the coefficient of friction… then we find the trajectory…”), wherein the determining movement of the plurality of elements comprises: detecting a contact between two neighboring elements; and generating a temporary bond between the two neighboring elements to simulate friction caused by rough rocks, wherein the temporary bond is determined based on a type of rock associated with the two neighboring elements (Title: “Rigid-Body Dynamics with Friction and Impact”; Abstract: “Rigid-body dynamics with unilateral contact is a good approximation for a wide range of everday phenomena… rock slides…”; Page 15: “… use a time-stepping formulation based on integrals of the contact forces… complementarity of optimization conditions are used to resolve whether contact is maintained or broken…”; page 16 2.1.2: “… contact and inelastic impacts can be formulated as follows. The data of the problem consists of the mass matrix (M(q), the contact constraint (f(q), its gradient n(q) =
∇
(f(q), the matrix of direction vectors … the coefficient of friction… then we find the trajectory…”; page 29: “… the coefficient of friction often depends on the sliding velocity as well as the nature of the materials in contact…” NOTE: the reference teaches that to use friction in calculations for rigid-body dynamic impacts including for rocks and also teaches that the coefficient of friction which determines the temporary bond between surfaces depends on the material (i.e., type of rock),
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Giesecke_2017 and Stewart_2000 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called modeling. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Stewart_2000. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to have a dynamic simulation with rigid-body impacts involving rocks and Steweart_2000 teaches to include friction in rigid-body impact simulation involving rocks and teaches that the friction coefficient is determined based on the material of the rocks. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Stewart_2000 for the benefit of a more accurate impact simulation that involves friction to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 does not explicitly teach “wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements is based on distance of the element to a blasthole in the blast plan” nor “and spacing of the plurality of blastholes in the blast plan,”
Weiss_2018 makes obvious “wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements is based on distance of the element to a blasthole in the blast plan” and “and spacing of the plurality of blastholes in the blast plan,” (FIG. 3D illustrates Finite Element refinement around a borehole).
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Weiss_2018 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulation. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Weiss_2018. The rationale for doing so would have been the Preece_2015 teaches to perform a simulation of a physical process inclusive of an Earth model in a region around a borehole. Weiss_2018 teaches to perform mesh refinement in the region around a borehole when performing simulations of a physical process inclusive of an Earth model for the benefit of preventing computational explosive calculations during the simulation. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine the heave model simulation for the earth bench model with the non-circular elements and mesh refinement of Weiss_2018 for the benefit of more efficient computations during the simulation to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claims 27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Teng_2018 in view of Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Dornfeld_2006 in view of Allotropes_2020 (Downloaded from Wikipedia archive dated 4/26/2020) in view of LibreTexts_2019 (Downloaded from Chemistry LibreTxts indexed into Google on Apr 27, 2019).
Claims 27 Allotropes_2020 makes obvious “wherein a rounded quadrilateral element is used for generating the site model for coal mining” (“… carbon is capable of forming many allotropes… due to its valency. Well-known forms for carbon include diamond and graphite… buckminsterfullerence and sheets…”
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NOTE: the image above shoes carbon forming rounded shapes includes quadrilateral shapes. Further, Coal is predominately carbon. Therefore, it would be obvious to model coal (i.e., predominately carbon) by using its natural form.),
Nquyen_2019 and Allotropes_2020 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called modeling. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Nquyen_2019 and Allotropes_2020. The rationale for doing so would have been that Nquyen_2019 teaches to model dynamic simulations of molecules using rounded shapes and Allotropes_2020 teaches that carbon which is the predominate constituent of coal can take a quadrilateral shape. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Nquyen_2019 and Allotropes_2020 for the benefit of more accurately modeling coal to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
LibreTexts_2019 makes obvious “and a rounded hexahedral element is used for generating the side model for at least gold and copper mining” (section 10.6: “… over 90% of naturally occurring and man-made solids are crystalline… when the particle pack in the most efficient manner… crystalline solids by considering elemental metals… a pure metal is a crystalline solide with metal atoms packed closely together in a repeating pattern… its simplest repeating unit, which is referred to as its unit cell. The unit cell consists of lattice points that represent the locations of atom ions… as illustread in Figure 10.6.1…”
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NOTE: gold and copper are both metals and they form face-centered cubes. Therefore, it would be obvious to use a hexahedral (i.e., 6 sided cube) to represent metals.
Nquyen_2019 and LibreTexts_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called modeling. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Nquyen_2019 and LibreTexts_2019. The rationale for doing so would have been that Nquyen_2019 teaches to model dynamic simulations of molecules using rounded shapes and LibreTexts_2019 teaches that metals form a hexahedral shape. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Nquyen_2019 and LibreTexts_2019 for the benefit of more accurately modeling metals (i.e., gold and copper) to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claims 14, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Weiss_2018 (US 2018/0247003) in view of and Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Marco_2019 (ES 2725321 A1).
Claim 14. Preece_2015 makes obvious “a method for explosive blast modeling (title: “… mineral blasting with 3D distinct element heave models…”; page 1 abstract: “… 3D distinct element models and parallel processing…”; page 1 introduction: “… 3D distinct element… the algorithm… to parallel processing… 3D ore movement simulations…” NOTE: an algorithm is a method. Ore movement occurs due to the explosive blasting), the method comprising: Receiving input data comprising blasthole data (page 1 abstract par 2 – 3: “… explosive deck delay timing… in this paper different blast design delay timing options are examined with models that include hundreds of blastholes…”; page 2: “… burden and spacing of the blast pattern…”; Figure 2 illustrates 150 marked blast holes. NOTE: blasthole data includes, burdens, timing,), bench information, and [assay] data for a blast site (page 1 abstract par 2: “… ore bodies are mapped to surface mineral mining through assay of the drill cuttings from each blasthole. This data is assimilated into surface polygons…”; page 2: “… it is well understood that mining occurs in a geologic media and that ore bodies are anything but regular or straight. Typically, assays are taken on drill cuttings and used to define or and waste blocks…”); Generating a site model for the blast site based on the input data, wherein the site model comprises a set of blastholes (page 2: “… the model generator, ROCKMESH, uses the blast design to create the hexagonal close-pack spherical array. A block of spheres is created where the blast modeling will occur…” NOTE: the blast design is the claimed blast plan. The claimed site model is the close-packed array.); Identifying zones around each blasthole of the set of blastholes, wherein each zone comprises a perimeter that is a target distance from an associated blasthole (Figure 1: “… circles at each blasthole are sized for region of influence and not borehole diameter…”); fragmenting the site model into a plurality of elements ((page 1: “… polygons during blasting…”; page 2: “… hexagonal close-pack spherical array… NOTE: a sphere is an element)
and Simulating a blast using the plurality of elements ( page 1 introduction: “… 3D ore movement simulations…”; page 2 par 2: “… Simulations using three different blast patterns delay timing will be presented…”; Page 2 par 4: “… define ore polygons on the model… their movement can be tracked during simulation… ore polygons…”; page 4 par 1: “… DMC-3D Simulations… Figure 4 illustrates the blasting inducted velocity at four times in a simulation… the blast movement…”; page 13 conclusions: “… based on… three-dimensional heave modeling… modeling of rock blasting induced heave with parallel processing… parallel simulations…”)
Preece_2015 does not teach “where a first set of elements within the zones are smaller than a second set of elements outside the zone” nor “Wherein each element determined based on the geologic input data” nor “non circular” nor “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time.”
Preece_2015 does not teach “Wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements within the zones are based on at least one of an energy density of an explosive, a type of the explosive, or an amount of the explosive in a blasthole associated with the zone”
Nruyen_2019; however, makes obvious shapes “non-circular” (page 14 Fig. 1 elements C, d; Fig. 2 NOTE: the figures illustrate rounded vertices (i.e., arcs) that connect one or more lines.).
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called particle motion simulation. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to simulate particle motion. Nguyen_2019 teaches that for studies where particle shape plays a vital role more complex shapes are required (abstract) and teaches for “larger particles” discrete element models (DEMs) are “widely used“ and “DEMs can also have faceted particles with generalized aspherical shapes defined by geometrical features such as vertices, edges and faces” (introduction). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 for the benefit of using the “widely used” element models for larger particles such as rocks to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 does not teach “where a first set of elements within the zones are smaller than a second set of elements outside the zone” nor “Wherein each element determined based on the geologic input data” nor “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time” nor “Wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements within the zones are based on at least one of an energy density of an explosive, a type of the explosive, or an amount of the explosive in a blasthole associated with the zone”
Weiss_2018; however, makes obvious “where a first set of elements within the zones are smaller than a second set of elements outside the zone” (FIG. 3A; 3C, 3D; par 35: “… variable mesh resolution in a computational model is nothing new, and there is a mature literature devoted to mesh-refinement schemes…”)
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Weiss_2018 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulation. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Weiss_2018. The rationale for doing so would have been the Preece_2015 teaches to perform a simulation of a physical process inclusive of an Earth model in a region around a borehole. Weiss_2018 teaches to perform mesh refinement in the region around a borehole when performing simulations of a physical process inclusive of an Earth model for the benefit of preventing computational explosive calculations during the simulation. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine the heave model simulation for the earth bench model with the non-circular elements and mesh refinement of Weiss_2018 for the benefit of more efficient computations during the simulation to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Weiss_2018 does not teach “Wherein each element determined based on the geologic input data” nor “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time” nor Wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements within the zones are based on at least one of an energy density of an explosive, a type of the explosive, or an amount of the explosive in a blasthole associated with the zone”
Mustafa_2019 makes obvious “geological data” indicative of geological properties and “Wherein each element determined based on the geologic input data (F85 – F86: “… the physical properties of the grains and their arrangement orientation, and size affect several processes and properties such as (1) effective elastic moduli, which controls seismic wave propagation… rock porosity and permeability… traditionally used in geophysics fail to predict the stress-dependent elastic properties of granular media because they do not account for the heterogeneous distribution of contacts and stress heterogeneity… finite-element simulations that the effective permittivity of a rock responds differently to changes in pore-size variation, shape variation, distribution, and arrangement… natural granular media are heterogeneous… grain packs have specific characteristics… such as void fraction or porosity, permeability, and pore body and throat-size distributions… the software is flexible enough to generate a variety of grain packs with different grain shapes, grain-size distributions, and grading… to create non-spherical irregularity shaped grains… prescribed shape and size distributions are modeled and compared with numerical and experimental measurements… the output of this method can be used as input… studies have shown that grain pack’s physical properties such as porosity, permeability, and the elastic bulk modulus are dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent grains…” F90 – F91: “… each grain group has a specific shape, property (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution), and prescribed grain-size distribution… defined as spherical, nonspherical (cubes, cylinders, ellipsoids, etc), and nonspherical irregular… assemble the grain pack… a virtual container (a rectangular box or cylinder…” F92: “… compared the porosity estimates obtained from the simulations with published numerical and experimental measurements in the literatures… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quartz mineral…” F93: “…. The porosity, approximately 0.36… simulate the grain packs under confining pressure, which will result in lower porosity… the porosity as a function of Perlin noise amplitude is illustrated in Figure 14… this indicates that a little bit of surface roughness, or angularity of the grains, which is observed in most real granular media, greatly affects the expected dense packing porosity… the porosity as a function of the Perlin noise amplitude…”
NOTE: the above teaches that it is known that geological data such as porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus is dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent geology (i.e., shape). The above also teach to modify the shape of simulated finite elements used in simulation to match the geologic data (i.e., porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus) and that the shapes can be non-spherical (i.e., cubes, polygons, etc.).
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulations. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Mustafa_2019
The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to perform an assay for the blast geology and to incorporate assay data into the simulation. Mustafa_2019 teaches to modify the shape of the simulated finite elements based on geologic data such as porosity, permeability, elasticity, etc.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Mustafa_2019 for the benefit of having a simulation that more accurately produces results that match real life to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 do not teach “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release time for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements in front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time” nor Wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements within the zones are based on at least one of an energy density of an explosive, a type of the explosive, or an amount of the explosive in a blasthole associated with the zone”
Yang_2011, however, makes obvious “wherein simulating the blast comprises identifying a burden release timing for the plurality of elements wherein a group of elements comprising elements is front of a row of blastholes and up to one-third of a burden behind the row of blastholes corresponds to a same burden release time” (page 120 introduction: “… in an ideal blast, the burden on any row should be well on move by the time the next row is fired. Field trials revealed that the rock from the previous row should be moved by one third of the burden distance before the next row is fired [5]…”).
Preece_2015 and Yang_2011 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called blasting. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Yang_2011. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to model blasting heave and Yang_2011 teaches that the ideal blast has a timing where the burden on any row should be well on move by the time the next row is fired and further teaches that it has been shown in field trials (real world) to use one third of the burden distance. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Yang_2011 for the benefit of modeling more accurately the real-world scenario that is ideal for moving material to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Marco_2019 makes obvious “Wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements within the zones are based on at least one of an energy density of an explosive, a type of the explosive, or an amount of the explosive in a blasthole associated with the zone” (page 5: “… holes are filled with explosives. For example, as shown in Figure 1, the first hole 108 is filled with explosives 120. The type and amount of explosives that fill the holes also affect the rock fragment size of the rock fragments resulting from DB event…”).
Preece_2015 and Marco_2019 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called drilling and explosives. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Marco_2019 The rationale for doing so would have been Preece_2015 teaches to simulate explosives and the movement of ore elements in pit mines and in incorporate assay information into the ore elements that represent ore fragments. Marco_2019 also teaches drilling and explosives in pit mines and that the type and amount of explosives affects the size of the rock fragments. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Marco_2019 for the benefit of having ore elements that take into account the amount and type of explosives so that the simulation more realistically simulates the real world to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claim 15. Preece_2015 also makes obvious “further comprising offsetting layers of the plurality of elements” (Figure 17, 18, 19, 20. See the image below which shows how each layer is offset from the one above.
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Claims 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Weiss_2018 and Musrafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Marco_2019 in view of Li_2018 (US 10,114,134).
Claim 16. Preece_2015 makes obvious “further comprising elements that cross a bench face of a blasthole” (Figures 2 – 20 NOTE: they polygons/hexagons/spheres are illustrated as whole unites and are illustrated as crossing the blast line).
Li_2018 makes obvious “further comprising truncating elements that cross a bench face e” (FIG. 9, 12, 13, Fig. 17 “divide the sub-meshes into one or more sub-mesh parts by the depositional faults” “represent cells in each sub-mesh part by a single polyhedron” NOTE: this teaches to cut a polyhedron (i.e., truncate) a non-circular element along a fault or face of a geologic structure)
Preece_2015 and Li_2018 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called simulations. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Li_2018. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to model geology using finite elements. Li_2018 teaches to match the shape of the finite elements with the bench faces of the geologic formation which the elements are modeling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Li_2018 for the benefit of having simulation elements that more accurately match the geology being modeled to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claims 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Weiss_2018 and Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Marco_2019 in view of Tutor_2017 (Density Practice Problems, The Organic Chemistry Tutor Aug 5, 2017 downloaded from YoutTube.com).
Claim 17. Mustafa_2019 makes obvious “wherein the rock density is determined based on the geology input data” (F90: “… each grain has a specified shape, property (such as density…”; F92: “… grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of a quarts mineral…”).
Tutor_2017 makes obvious “further comprising determining a mass of each of the plurality of elements by multiplying an area of an element by spacing and rock density, (page 1 and 2 EXAMINER NOTE: multiplying an area of an element (i.e., length X width) by spacing (i.e., depth) is simply the volume of an element. Therefore, multiplying an area of an element by spacing and rock density is simply volume X density and the fundamental formula for mass known by those of ordinary skill in the art is Mass = Volume X Density.),
Nguyen_2019 and Tutor_2017 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called physics calculations. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Nguyen_2019 and Tutor_2017.
The rationale for doing so would have been the Nguyen_2019 teaches to model the forces acting on particles (page 17: “… compute the force and torque acting on all constitute particles… update the position, orientation, and translation/rotational velocity for each body…”) and also states “stores its properties: total mass…” (page 18). Tutor_2017 teaches that given the dimensions of a ridged body (i.e., LxWxH = cross sectional area x length = volume) and the density the total mass = volume x density.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine the ridged body of Nguyen_2019 with the calculation for mass taught by Tutor_2017 for the benefit of calculating total mass as taught by Nguyen_2019 to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claims 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Weiss_2018 and Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Marco_2019 in view of Preece_1997 (Expanding Rock Blast Modeling Capabilities of DMC_BLAST, including Buffer Blasting 1997).
Claim 18. Preece_1997 makes obvious “further comprising rotating the site model to create a geology dip” (Figure 1: “Bench blast simulation with geologic layers dipping to the face… defined using coordinates…”; Figure 2 “… dipping…” page 5/12: “modeling dipping top surface, bottom surface and fining the pit floor” Examiner Note: This clearly illustrates a site model angled down to creating a geology dip).
Preece_2015 and Preece_1997 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called blast modeling. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Preece_1997 because Preece_2015 teaches to perform blasting simulations. Preece_1997 teaches that typically in the U.S. flat lying beds are used for bench blasting but in some part of the world dipping layers are used, such as in Canada and states that modeling dipping is important just like horizontal. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Preece_1997 for the benefit of modeling blasts that occur in various parts of the world including those that have dipping to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claims 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Weiss_2018 and Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Marco_2019 in view of Zhou_2020 (A Novel Method to Evaluate the Effect of Slope Blasting under impact Loading, 4/15/2020).
Claim 20. While Preece_2015 teaches to extend the elements beneath a plat pit as illustrated in Figures 16, 17, 18, 19; Preece_2015 does not teach further comprising extending, if the blastholes are subdrilled, the elements beneath a blast pit beyond a bench face by a length of a first burden.
Zhou_2020; however, makes obvious further comprising extending, if the blastholes are subdrilled, the non-circular elements beneath a blast pit beyond a bench face by a length of a first burden (Figure 8. NOTE: the model of the simulation domain extends below and beyond the face of the bench by a length of the illustrated burden).
Preece_2015 and Zhou_2020 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called finite blast simulations. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Zhou_2020.
The rationale for doing so would have been the PReece_2015 teaches to have elements below the blast pit that define the simulation domain and Zhou_2020 illustrates a blast based on real-world dimensions and shows that the impact of a sub drilled blast extends below and beyond the bench face by a length of a first burden. Therefore; it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Zhou_2020 for the benefit of having the simulation encompass a realistic simulation domain to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claim 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Weiss_2018 in view of and Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Marco_2019 in view of Stewart_2000 (Rigid-Body Dynamics with Friction and Impact, SIAM REVIEW Vol. 42, No. 1, pp 3 – 39).
Claim 26. While Preece_2015 explicitly teaches to perform geologic assays and to incorporate the assay data into simulation polygons (abstract: “… Ore bodies are mapped in surface mineral mining through assay of the drill cuttings from each blasthole. This data is assimilated into surface polygons…”), Preece_2015 does not explicitly teach to incorporate, for example, rock type mass or friction data.
Mustafa_2019 makes obvious “wherein a shape type of each of the plurality of elements is based on the geological data (F85 – F86: “… the physical properties of the grains and their arrangement orientation, and size affect several processes and properties such as (1) effective elastic moduli, which controls seismic wave propagation… rock porosity and permeability… traditionally used in geophysics fail to predict the stress-dependent elastic properties of granular media because they do not account for the heterogeneous distribution of contacts and stress heterogeneity… finite-element simulations that the effective permittivity of a rock responds differently to changes in pore-size variation, shape variation, distribution, and arrangement… natural granular media are heterogeneous… grain packs have specific characteristics… such as void fraction or porosity, permeability, and pore body and throat-size distributions… the software is flexible enough to generate a variety of grain packs with different grain shapes, grain-size distributions, and grading… to create non-spherical irregularity shaped grains… prescribed shape and size distributions are modeled and compared with numerical and experimental measurements… the output of this method can be used as input… studies have shown that grain pack’s physical properties such as porosity, permeability, and the elastic bulk modulus are dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent grains…” F90 – F91: “… each grain group has a specific shape, property (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution), and prescribed grain-size distribution… defined as spherical, nonspherical (cubes, cylinders, ellipsoids, etc), and nonspherical irregular… assemble the grain pack… a virtual container (a rectangular box or cylinder…” F92: “… compared the porosity estimates obtained from the simulations with published numerical and experimental measurements in the literatures… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quartz mineral…” F93: “…. The porosity, approximately 0.36… simulate the grain packs under confining pressure, which will result in lower porosity… the porosity as a function of Perlin noise amplitude is illustrated in Figure 14… this indicates that a little bit of surface roughness, or angularity of the grains, which is observed in most real granular media, greatly affects the expected dense packing porosity… the porosity as a function of the Perlin noise amplitude…”
NOTE: the above teaches that it is known that geological data such as porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus is dependent on the morphological characteristics of the constituent geology (i.e., shape). The above also teach to modify the shape of simulated finite elements used in simulation to match the geologic data (i.e., porosity, permeability, elastic bulk modulus) and that the shapes can be non-spherical (i.e., cubes, polygons, etc.), , and wherein simulating the blast comprises determining movement of the plurality of elements based on a mass of each of the plurality of elements (F88: “the rigid body contact model… consider n rigid bodies with position/rotation… external forces (such as gravity) and torque… and masses/rotation inertia M
∈
R6nX6n . The collision detection identifies the m contacts between rigid bodies… function of the position vector… solved in the system of Newton’s second law of motion … change in momentum… equation 1, 2, 4 … the updated new velocity… and position… can be calculated… friction is implemented using an approximation to the Coulomb friction model…”), wherein the mass is determined based on the size of the elements, the geological data (F92: “… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quarts mineral…” F90: “… each grain group has specific shape, properties (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution” NOTE: density = mass/volume which makes mass being based on the size of an element obvious because the volume of an element indicates the size of the element. ), , wherein the determining movement of the plurality of elements comprises: detecting a contact between two neighboring elements; and generating a temporary bond between the two neighboring elements to simulate friction (F88: “the rigid body contact model… consider n rigid bodies with position/rotation… external forces (such as gravity) and torque… and masses/rotation inertia M
∈
R6nX6n . The collision detection identifies the m contacts between rigid bodies… function of the position vector… solved in the system of Newton’s second law of motion … change in momentum… equation 1, 2, 4 … the updated new velocity… and position… can be calculated… friction is implemented using an approximation to the Coulomb friction model…” F90: “… each grain group has specific shape, properties (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution), caused by rough rocks (Fig 2, 4 illustrate making grains rough.), wherein the rock type is determined based on the geologic data (F92: “… the grains have the same density of 2.65 g/cm3, that of quarts mineral…” F90: “… each grain group has specific shape, properties (such as density, friction, and coefficient of restitution” NOTE: this teaches that types of rocks have specific geologic properties such as quarts has density of 2.65 g/cm3 and that grains (i.e., elements) are defined with specific properties such as density and friction making it obvious that, for example, quarts simulation elements would be defined based upon its density or mass or friction properties of quarts.)
While Mustafa_2019 at page F93 teaches to “simulate the grain packs under confining pressures” and that doing so “will result ins lower porosity” and because confining pressure, also known as lithostatic pressure, is the stress exerted on rocks due to weight on the overlying rocks and sediments is directly related to rock burden it may properly be found that “wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements is based on distance of the element to a blasthole in the blast plan” and “and spacing of the plurality of blastholes in the blast plan.”
Nevertheless, Weiss_2018 makes obvious “wherein a size of each of the plurality of elements is based on distance of the element to a blasthole in the blast plan” and “and spacing of the plurality of blastholes in the blast plan,” (FIG. 3D illustrates Finite Element refinement around a borehole).
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Weiss_2018 and Mustafa_2019 “wherein the temporary bond is determined based on a type of rock associated with the two neighboring elements”
Stewart_2000 makes obvious “, and Wherein simulating the blast comprises determining movement of the plurality of elements based on a mass of each of the plurality of elements (page 16 2.1.2: “… contact and inelastic impacts can be formulated as follows. The data of the problem consists of the mass matrix (M(q), the contact constraint (f(q), its gradient n(q) =
∇
(f(q), the matrix of direction vectors … the coefficient of friction… then we find the trajectory…”), wherein the determining movement of the plurality of elements comprises: detecting a contact between two neighboring elements; and generating a temporary bond between the two neighboring elements to simulate friction caused by rough rocks, wherein the temporary bond is determined based on a type of rock associated with the two neighboring elements (Title: “Rigid-Body Dynamics with Friction and Impact”; Abstract: “Rigid-body dynamics with unilateral contact is a good approximation for a wide range of everday phenomena… rock slides…”; Page 15: “… use a time-stepping formulation based on integrals of the contact forces… complementarity of optimization conditions are used to resolve whether contact is maintained or broken…”; page 16 2.1.2: “… contact and inelastic impacts can be formulated as follows. The data of the problem consists of the mass matrix (M(q), the contact constraint (f(q), its gradient n(q) =
∇
(f(q), the matrix of direction vectors … the coefficient of friction… then we find the trajectory…”; page 29: “… the coefficient of friction often depends on the sliding velocity as well as the nature of the materials in contact…” NOTE: the reference teaches that to use friction in calculations for rigid-body dynamic impacts including for rocks and also teaches that the coefficient of friction which determines the temporary bond between surfaces depends on the material (i.e., type of rock),
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Weiss_2018 and Giesecke_2017 and Stewart_2000 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called modeling. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Preece_2015 and Stewart_2000. The rationale for doing so would have been that Preece_2015 teaches to have a dynamic simulation with rigid-body impacts involving rocks and Steweart_2000 teaches to include friction in rigid-body impact simulation involving rocks and teaches that the friction coefficient is determined based on the material of the rocks. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Preece_2015 and Stewart_2000 for the benefit of a more accurate impact simulation that involves friction to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Claim 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Preece_2015 in view of Nguyen_2019 in view of Weiss_2018 in view of and Mustafa_2019 in view of Yang_2011 in view of Marco_2019 in view of Giesecke_2017
Claim 25. Giesecke_2017 makes obvious “wherein each element is stored in the memory in a data structure comprising a center point for each arc” (Chapter Geometry for Modeling and Design page 2 “the CAD database… in the CAD database…” page 3: “a CAD file, a circle is often stored as a center point and a radius…” page 6: “… Arcs An arc is a portion of a circle. An arc can be defined by specifying any of the following… a center, radius, and angle measure… a center, radius, a chord length, a center, radius, and arc length, the end points and radius, the endpoints and a chord length, the endpoints and arc length…” NOTE: the above teaches that geometry with a radius is modeled by specifying a center for the radius and geometry data can be stored in a file or database.) wherein, for each arc, the data structure comprises at least one of an arc angle, an arc radius and at least one arc endpoint” (Chapter Geometry for Modeling and Design page 6: “… Arcs An arc is a portion of a circle. An arc can be defined by specifying any of the following… a center, radius, and angle measure… a center, radius, a chord length, a center, radius, and arc length, the end points and radius, the endpoints and a chord length, the endpoints and arc length…”)
Preece_2015 and Nguyen_2019 and Teng_2018 and Mustafa_2019 and Giesecke_2017 are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor called modeling. Before the effective filing date it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine Giesecke_2017 and Teng_2018. The rationale for doing so would have been Teng_2018 teaches to have a computer with a memory the stores and processes geometric shapes (par 31: “main memory”; par 32: “… data to be transferred from the removable storage 622 to computer system 600…”; par 37: “… the main memory 608 may be loaded with one or more application modules… the results are computed and stored in the secondary memory…”; page 4 Claim 8: “… the method of claim 1… comprises a geometric shape of the blast source…” par 22: “… it can be any arbitrary shape. The invention supports different combinations…”; par 24: “… any given geometric shape, for example, circle… or sphere or cylinder…”) and Giesecke_2017 teaches that geometry for modeling is stored in databases and file and that geometric shapes such as arcs are defined by their center. Therefore; it would have been obvious to combine Giesecke_2017 the center of an arc that defines an arc and the memory of Teng_2018 used to store and process geometric information for the benefit of having a method of defining information about geometric structures that have arc in computer memory to obtain the invention as specified in the claims.
Further, in combination, the prior art makes “wherein the arc radius is based on the geologic data” obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art because Mustafa_2019 teaches that the shapes can be modified to match geologic properties such as porosity. See Figure 4 where the curves of the finite element particle change according to Perlin noise amplitude which can be related to porosity.
Conclusion
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/BRIAN S COOK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2146