Okuzeka
Oil, Gas & Mining vocabulary · Mine Types & Mining Operations

Bench

Meaning in oil, gas & mining, with examples

/bentʃ/nounCommon term

In oil, gas & mining, bench means: One of the flat, step-like levels cut into the walls of an open pit or quarry, where drilling, blasting and loading take place.

In Turkish: basamak, şev basamağı, kademe

How it is used

Each bench has a bench height (often 10 to 15 metres in large pits), a face, a crest and a toe. Mining moves down bench by bench, and safety berms catch falling rock. Benches are often named by elevation: 'we are mining the 640 bench'.

Example sentences

  1. The bench height in the main pit is 12 metres.

  2. Drilling on the 580 bench will finish tomorrow, and we blast on Friday.

Common collocations

  • bench height
  • bench face
  • safety berm
  • bench blasting
  • open-pit mineA mine where ore is dug from the surface in a large, stepped hole that gets wider and deeper over time, instead of through underground tunnels.
  • blastingBreaking rock with explosives placed in drilled holes so it can be loaded and removed. It is a daily task in open pits, underground mines and quarries.
  • stripping ratioIn an open-pit mine, the amount of waste rock that must be removed for each unit of ore mined; a ratio of 4:1 means four tonnes of waste for every tonne of ore.
  • excavatorA large digging machine with a boom, arm and bucket on a rotating cab, used in mines to dig rock and load it into trucks.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Mine Types & Mining Operations

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: