Design of room & pillar exploitations of non-expensive minerals and ornamental rocks in Spain

In the recent years a number of shallow room & pillar mines have been opened in Spain. In this paper we present a basic suggested methodology for their design. This includes, after classical geological and geomechanical characterization inplace and in the lab, the application of simple empirical methods to provide with a preliminary design. This design is assessed, and changed if needed, according to different approaches. These techniques include first, assessing structurally controlled instability phenomena. They also include the stress-strain analysis of the behavior of the rock masses, which is performed according to numerical techniques. And finally, the study of the behavior of excavation in stratified media is done, if this is the case. The combination of empirical, analytical and numerical techniques results quite useful for these design processes. Particular attention has been paid to particular problems observed in practice derived from a number of cases studies in various types of mines in which the authors were involved.