Over the past decades, the mining of deep underground resources has greatly expanded due to the shortage of easily minable, near-surface mineral deposits. 1, 2 Among numerous underground excavation techniques, sublevel stoping is the most widely practiced method in Canadian underground mines. 3, 4, 5, 6 Underground open stope stability is of significant concern to rock mechanics engineers as it directly affects mining production capacity and the safety of workers and equipment. 6, 7, 8, 9

Three general approaches are commonly used to analyze the stability of underground excavations: analytical, empirical, and numerical methods. Analytical methods cannot accurately represent complex mining problems. 10 Common empirical methods (eg, the stability graph method) 11, 12 also have certain limitations, such as not considering the tensile mode of failure and the oversimplification of irregular geometries, thereby restricting the functionality these methods. 13 Numerical methods, on the other hand, circumvent the limitations of the two other methods and, therefore, have been widely used to analyze the stability of underground excavations.