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By Kinross Paracatu, Victor Morais, Luis Marinho, Rolando Fuentes, Lucas Steffen, Leopoldo Muñoz, Washington Vilas

Nowadays, mining operations close to communities face increasingly challenges, especially in their drilling and blasting operations. One of the critical effects are the ground vibrations produced in its surroundings. The impact on the community must be minimized to guarantee the license to operate and, on the other hand, costs must be optimized, and an adequate fragmentation must be achieved to ensure the efficiency of subsequent processes and, consequently, to give sustainability to the business. In this regard, it is necessary that some controlled blasting technique to be performed and the utilization of advanced vibrations models. Currently, it is common in the industry either use of the double decking technique, where very low explosive charges are applied, making it necessary to use smaller drill patterns in order to keep powder factor as per design, which strongly increases the demand for drilling and a consequent impact negative on costs.

Feb 6, 2023

By Joe Atalla, Leojenen Etulle, Jesse Desrochers, Joseph Mukendi Kabuya, Remi Proulx, Ruilin Yang

The Mont-Wright mine is Canada's largest open-pit iron ore mine with multiple open pits in operation. It is operated by ArcelorMittal Mining Canada in the northeast of the province of Quebec, near the town of Fermont. Fragmentation of rocks with explosives generates vibrations and gas expansion that damage intact rocks, affect existing crack networks, reduce the shear strength of discontinuities and the quality of the rock mass of the highwalls. The efficiency of its blasting operations is challenged by the need to optimize production and manage the risk of mine slope instability caused by vibrations from successive blasts. This paper presents a Multiple Seed Waveform (MSW) vibration model that was established at the mine for this purpose. Near-field signature hole blast vibration monitoring was conducted in multiple areas to establish site characterization as input to the blast vibration modeling at the highwalls of the site. The vibration attenuation laws were established and the effects of different blasthole diameters, shifting frequencies and presplit design were evaluated. Based on the results obtained from the near-field blast vibration monitoring, the calibrated MSW vibration model was used to select blast design parameters to control blast vibration while maximizing productivity of blasts at Mont-Wright mine.

Jan 26, 2026

By Sushil Bhandari, Amit Bhandari

In this paper, a case study is presented of a large global cement company using a cloud and mobile based platform across 17 of their mines consistently over a large number of users over a period of over two years. The use of a blast platform is detailed which include blast designs, blast data collection and the trends in terms of results.

Feb 1, 2020

By Eric C. Gerst

"In this current era of soft commodity and coal prices the mining industry is turning towards optimizingall levels of production to reduce operating costs. Part of this trend includes the automation of miningmachines. As the first tier of the mining process blast hole drill automation offers benefits through the entire value stream from drill bench to material processing."

Jan 1, 2017

By Javier Castaneda, Luis Zozaya, Noel Huarachi, María Rocha

The objective of the project was to implement and calibrate drill and blast models supported by Geotechnical and Geological models as well as the mine and operation characteristics. The models would then be migrated to HxGN Blast to ensure a productive process that is simplified, digitized and optimized.

Feb 1, 2020

By Paul Worsey, Braden Lusk

Differences exist between public perception of construction blasting and quarry blasting. In general, people are able to tolerate short term inconveniences much better than long term ones. The paper focuses on the public perception of quarry blasting in St. Charles County, MO. This expanding urban environment has seen new legislation targeting preexisting quarry operations that have been in place for many years. A survey was made comprising interviews conducted to gauge perceptions of persons with varying demographics. Interviews covered topics involved with quarry blasting and its reporting methods. The purpose of the interviews was to determine public perception of blasting and how best to report results of vibration measurements. The use of different, less technically complicated measurement scales for vibration and airblast was considered as an alternative reporting system. The question for the industry is, “Has our past haste in adopting complex scientific scales and units been detrimental to us?” In other words, are we reporting the correct things? For airblast, the decibel scale was evaluated against millibar in the public eye. Peak Particle Velocity was also compared to that for displacement. Current legislation in the county is based on complaint levels rather than damage criteria. The complaints most likely not only come from ignorance to the affects of blasting on structures, but also sparse understanding of the units used to report these affects. The past practice of treading softly as an industry has been proven to be a poor choice, and education of the public as well as lawmakers on all levels is necessary. The Mississippi Valley Chapter of ISEE has begun to conduct seminars to this end. One educational seminar has taken place for officials and lawmakers in the St. Louis area, and others are in the planning stages. The focus of this paper is to gauge perception of the damage criteria reported today, and locate focal points for future education of the public in rapidly expanding suburban environments.

Jan 1, 2005

By Donald Jonson

The Arlanda Link project is for the time being the most interesting project in Sweden, concerning rock and blasting technology. The total amount of rock excavated beneath Arlanda airport comprises 800 000 m³ divided in four parallel tunnels measuring a total length of 8,5 km, with a rock covering of only 5-15 m between the tunnel roof and existing terminal buildings.

Jan 1, 1997

By P J. Dailey, S L. Burchell, R F. Chiappetta

High-speed motion picture photography and its application to the mining, quarry, construction, and explosive industries has proven to be a valuable diagnostic tool. The techniques developed allow one to evaluate blasting performance, compare explosive efficiencies in relation to burden velocity, and estimate optimum delay times to provide adequate forward relief.

Jan 1, 1983

By Robert B. Hopler

The history of bulk loaded explosives begins with the loading of black powder and RRP (Railroad Powder) into vertical boreholes. The early air place, net of black powder and nitrostarch dynamites is covered, as are the brands and formulas of the nitroglycerinsensitized "Bagged" powders.

Jan 1, 1993

By Brent Coleman, Wade Hutchison

The Montgomery Bell Academy project is a parking garage structure topped by a soccer field. This project included expanding parking and moving the present tennis courts. The project is located adjacent to an affluent historic neighborhood that posed some special public relations challenges.

Jan 1, 2012

This paper describes the circuit simulations based on SPICE of the SDI Electronic Detonator System at the system level. SDI is launching the Electronic Detonator System with a robust serial protocol exhibiting great ease in field usability and deployment. Programmable delay time with increment of 1 ms up to 10s is possible. Bus length of up to 2 km containing 1600 detonators can be utilized. This system was analyzed using SPICE simulations and an Excel-based firing model spreadsheet. The effects of wire diameter, resistivity, detonator leakage characteristics, blasting array topology (lumped, linearly distributed or branched) were simulated using the firing model. Such spreadsheet is instrumental in determining the blasting topology of any given detonator number and bus wire diameter or resistivity. Initial simulation results were interactively coupled back into making the serial protocol more robust during typical mining conditions.

Jan 1, 2006

By Yannick Bleuzen, Manuel Joao, Frederic Monath, Miguel Quaresma

The N1 Porto tunnel project is a 650m segment of large-scale civil engineering plan to improve traffic flow between Porto’s downtown district, the Santo Antonio hospital district and the highway access. The tunnel is being excavated into a massive “Granito do Porto” granite structure, 4 – 20m below a highly urbanized environment of Porto, Portugal. The project was originally started in 2000 and was stopped due to the inability to mechanically excavate the granite rock. The city of Porto engineers then turned to traditional drilling and blasting techniques. The use of pyrotechnical delay detonators did not easily comply with the specified environmental and safety requirements concerning blast charging, firing and vibration control resulting in the process taking far too much time. The introduction of digital blasting was proposed to overcome these concerns.

Jan 1, 2005

By Robert Hopler

In use, blasting powder is exploded by a spark from fuse, electric squib or miner’s squib, or by a primer of some high explosive, the last being employed only in heavy charges on open work. In mining, and sometimes in light charges on open work, blasting powder is made into cartridges by means of a paper tube or cylinder sealed at one end, which is known as the Du Pont tamping bag. Sometimes the paper cylinder is made by the miner by coiling a section of heavy paper, known as blasting paper, around a wooden pin, called a cartridge pin, and securing it with what is called blasting soap. The removal of the pin leaves a cylindrical cartridge open at one end, into which the powder is poured and the top folded and sealed with blasting soap.

Jan 1, 2014

By R Yang, P D. Katsabanis, W F. Bawden

Understanding the mechanisms which are taking place during the propagation of a stress wave generated by an explosive charge is of high importance in the detection, characterization and prediction of blast induced damage to the rock. Vibrations caused by the detonation of an explosive are suspected to contribute significantly to the extension of the damage zone. Vibration monitoring close to a blasthole is a relatively new field of research, the hindrance being the scarcity of transducers capable of sustaining extreme accelerations without damage. This paper focuses on the vibration monitoring aspect of a blast induced damage study; the experiment took place at Queen's test site and was meant to record near-field vibration as close as 1 m from 100 mm diameter blastholes.

Jan 1, 1993

By M. Gebhardt, J. Johnson, S. Rosenthal

The use of presplitting applications in an underground mine setting is a method of reducing overbreak in the rib and back when blasting occurs. Presplitting performed at the Underground Mine Education Center (UMEC) on Montana Technological University’s campus in Butte, Montana showed a dramatic decrease in the amount of overbreak incurred in the blasting process. Application of the presplitting technique occurred after presplitting presentations at ISEE in San Antonio. Presplit testing consisted of drilling perimeter holes closer together than production holes and loading perimeter holes with a combination of specialized presplit explosive and packaged emulsion with electronic detonator initiation. The ideology was to shoot the perimeter row first, to create a fracture around the perimeter, so when the main production round is shot there is less shock exerted on the surrounding walls due to the pre-fractured perimeter rock. For the test performed, the back ended up with 83% of total holes resulting in half barrels representing a remarkable result. The right rib ended up with one half barrel visible before muck was removed while the left rib did not have any half barrels visible due to a clay seam being in very close vicinity to the perimeter row. The first test blast was a great start encouraging future work on presplitting applications in the UMEC. Additional testing will continue with different combinations of perimeter hole spacing, the addition of a buffer row along the ribs, and varying loading techniques to determine the most effective presplit method for the rock type of the UMEC. Detailed test results and loading configurations will be provided in the paper.

Jan 1, 2024

By Lazar Kricak, Zoran Teodorovis, Dragan Bogunovic

Scattering of delay interval around nominal value is an important issue in blasting practice. The scatter interval, as becomes wider, increases a probability of time delay overlapping adjacent blastholes. An excessive flyrock, ground vibrations, air blast and poor fragmentation are the symptoms for scattering related problems. Utilization of the short delays in the blastholes and longer delays on the surface are recommended solution to overcome mentioned problems. In contrast to global trends manifested through the application of electronic detonators and non-electric shock tube systems, revitalization of inexpensive electric detonators in combination with an accurate initiation system may be an acceptable solution. An extensive work was carried out at the Blasting Center Laboratory at the College of Mining and Geology, University of Belgrade, to develop a precise initiation system. As a result, Sequential Blasting Initiation System – Radio Frequency (SBIS-RF) was developed. It is expected that this system will increase blasting productivity, and reduce negative environmental impacts and total blasting costs.

Jan 1, 2008

By Douglas R. Simms

O & G Industries, Inc. owns and operates a number of rock quarries within the State of Connecticut. These rock quarries are surrounded by residences and commercial neighbors who have concerns related to blasting. In addition, local commissions which issue the mining permits to O & G are required to hold public hearings, prior to issuing the annual permits each year.

Jan 1, 1994

By Tristan Worsey

This work was performed during the summer of 2008 during the junior year of a BS in Mining Engineering. It was observed that the mine was having a problem with back break during the blasting of development drifts. The unwanted back break was causing the mine extra costs in ventilation, ore dilution, ground support, back fill, explosives and man-hours. The blasting practices were observed for four weeks and the problems and their solutions were defined. In this paper the reasons and causes of the problem are explained with the proposed solutions to eliminate back break.

Jan 1, 2010

By Andre Pienaar, Larry Wilson, Clive Dawkins

The development of implementation of cost effective emulsion explosive and portable pumping system for the replacement of package explosives in the deep level gold mining environment. A number of versions of portable pumps will be presented, demonstrating continuous improvement on these systems. Data on reliability of units in the field will be presented.

Jan 1, 2009

By Jason Rock, Rob Thompson, Lee Julian

Reactive ground is ground that undergoes a spontaneous exothermic reaction after it comes into contact with nitrates. This is commonly caused by inert rock hosting sulphide minerals, such as pyrites that act as the reagent. The presence and subsequent rate of reaction with nitrate based bulk explosives can be difficult to predict. Once identified, only explosives that are tested and proven to be compatible with the reactive ground may only be used. These typically take the form of inhibited ammonium nitrate emulsion blended with a limited volume of ANFO or porous prilled ammonium nitrate (PPAN) to ensure that all AN prills in the blend are wholly encapsulated and thus protected from the reactive ground. The requirement for high emulsion content bulk products limits the suite of products available for use to high energy, and high expense products. Further, if chemically sensitised products are used, charged holes must be left unstemmed to allow for gassing to occur, adding delay and exposing the blast crew to an unconfined charge in reactive ground. A range of inhibited products has been developed that are solid sensitised and can be bulked to as low as 0.9 g/cc (56.2 lb/ft3). The use of a solid sensitiser enables stemming to occur immediately after each hole is charged, confining any unplanned detonation more safely within the rock mass. The effective and precise manufacture of bulked inhibited products required a new and innovative Mobile Processing Unit (MPU) design. This MPU required the ability to blend two solid raw materials (AN prill & sensitiser) along with two liquid ingredients (AN emulsion and process fuel). This MPU has been designed, manufactured and has used successfully to manufacture low density inhibited explosives. This paper presents an innovative shift in inhibited bulk products with specific reference to their manufacture and application.