# Digitalization in Open-Pit Mining: A New Approach in Monitoring and Control of Rock Fragmentation
## 4 Results and Discussion  
Figure 6 presents the results of an experiment with a general fragment form distribution for all the experiments. Figure 5: The area of the rock mass explosion. In the figure, you can see the following trend in the form change: the number of cubic pieces decreases after each stage of crushing, and the number of spilt and square pieces increases. Figure 7 shows the same results but averaged over three experiments. By analyzing Figure 7, it can be seen that the fragment form during the natural formation of the rock (geological stage) is distributed in such a way that the percentage of spilt minerals is almost twice as large as cube and square. We decided to compare the change in a set of cubic together with square and spilt forms. The result is presented in Figure 8.  
Figure 6: The experiment results: overall fragment form distribution for all experiments. Figure 7: The experimental results: general fragment form distribution (mean values for three experiments). By analyzing Figure 8, the following result is obtained: when evaluating a set of cubic and square forms with a spilt one, a ratio of 51.3 to 48.7 is observed. Thus, the set of irregular (spilt) and regular (cube and square) forms is uniform, which is probably not accidental. In addition, when analyzing Figure 8, one can see an increase in the spilt form from the first to the third technological stage and a decrease in the cubic one. At the same time, the graph shows the linear nature of this change. At the next stage of the experiment, we drew an approximating curve and assessed the nature of its change (Figure 9). Figure 8: The experimental results: comparison of the distribution of a cubic together with square and spilt fragment form based on the mean values for the three experiments. Figure 9: Experimental results: distribution comparison of cubic and square and spilt fragment forms based on the mean values for the three experiments. Approximating curve shows these changes. As shown in Figures 10-12, the trend continued in all three cases separately. At the same time, the R\({}^{2}\) coefficient varies from 0.8663 to 0.9885. To analyze this in detail, the forms' distribution was also plotted for each fraction. Figure 13 shows the form distribution by fractions. Figure 11: The experimental results: comparison of cubic together with square and spilt fragment forms’ distribution based on the mean values for the 2 nd experiment. Approximating curve shows these changes. Figure 12: The experimental results: comparison of cubic together with square and spilt fragment forms distribution based on the mean values for the 3 rd experiment. Approximating curve shows these changes. In Figure 13, you can see that the 60-90-centimeter fraction is represented only by the spilt and square form, and the 90-120-centimeter fraction is only cubic. In this case, no characteristic change in the form distribution is observed. Thus, the results obtained show that a change in the pieces' form distribution in combination with other measured parameters can provide additional knowledge about the process and, therefore, should be taken into account in the integrated information and analytical system of mining. The authors emphasize that the results obtained from the form of the pieces were obtained during the experiments that were conducted by hand. Part of the rock mass was taken out by dump trucks (Belaz with a carrying capacity of 42 tons) on a flat site, disassembled manually and a piece-by-piece measurement of each piece and sieve analysis was performed, which gave the results presented above. However, this experiment is not possible under industrial conditions due to its high labor intensity. For industrial systems, it is necessary to develop special software that allows an assessment of the distribution of the shape of pieces to be made in an automated mode.