| PhD Seminar

Name of the Speaker: Ms. Catherine Thomas (EE21D068)
Guide: Dr. Boby George
Venue: ESB-244 (Seminar Hall)
Online meeting link: https://meet.google.com/wta-jryg-wjv?hs=224
Date/Time: 3rd October 2025 ( Friday), 4.00pm
Title: Inductive Sensing for the Differentiation of Superior and Inferior Copper Ore

Abstract :

The mining industry faces a critical challenge in assessing copper ore quality at the excavation site. Current methods are often expensive or require transportation of ore to distant facilities before evaluation. This not only increases operational costs but also results in unnecessary processing of low-grade ore, leading to waste generation and resource inefficiency. Despite the need, there is a lack of low-cost, reliable sensing systems that can perform on-site ore grading in real time.

This seminar introduces a novel inductive sensing system integrated into an excavation bucket, which evaluates the quality of copper ore directly at the mining site, helping to determine whether transportation and further processing are justified. The mining industry currently lacks low-cost and reliable nonintrusive sensing solutions for this purpose. Since ore quality is closely linked to its conductivity, an inductive sensing approach has been developed with specially designed planar coils. By measuring the real and imaginary parts of output voltage from the signal conditioning circuit that incorporates the coil at a specific excitation frequency, ores of superior and inferior quality can be distinguished. A thresholding technique, based on statistical analysis of repeated measurements, achieves a classification accuracy of nearly 99.73%. The system employs three sets of coils: a middle planar coil, to sense the ore fill level and ensure sufficient fill level; and right and left planar coils at the bucket base to assess ore quality. Laboratory experiments demonstrate that the system is negligibly affected by moisture, while finite element simulations and prototype testing confirm its effectiveness for both level sensing and ore grading. This sensing approach enables on-site grading of copper ore, improving economic feasibility, reducing waste, and conserving resources.