Eduan du Plessis is establishing the modelling foundation for a future master’s study of rock stability in mechanised mining environments.
Honours research foundation
During the first semester of 2026, Eduan reviewed modelling techniques for fractured rock. Fractures introduce discontinuities, contact behaviour and scale effects that cannot always be represented adequately by a continuous homogeneous material model.
The review considers how those choices affect the questions that can be answered about stability around mechanised excavations. It links directly to the Cutting and Drilling Hard Rock thrust and to the broader need for models, including future rock-mass digital twins, that remain meaningful when geological structure changes.
Multidisciplinary preparation
Eduan’s honours programme combines modules from mechanical engineering, mining engineering and computer science. That mix reflects the eventual research problem: rock stability requires geological and mining context, numerical mechanics and an implementation that can be interrogated computationally.
His second-semester research study is intended to define the basis of the future MEng dissertation. The work is jointly supervised by Prof Francois Malan and Prof Stephan Heyns.