Bulldozing Improvements for Mine Spoil Reclamation

The objective of this paper is to carefully examine the single most costly activity in reclamation--spoil leveling--and discuss technical details of leveling processes and new methods that have been developed to increase productivity and thereby reduce the cost of these leveling operations. This paper reviews technical data and presents conclusions resulting from the conduct of a series of hardware development and demonstration projects performed by the Southwest Research Institute for the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the U.S. Department of Energy.