Search Documents

By Jack Curran

KANSAS CITY, MO - Performing one of the most impressive urban building-implosion projects in recent memory, Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Dykon Explosive Demolition Corp. and Omaha, Nebraska-based Anderson Excavating recently felled the landmark Columbia Bank Building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Although every structural blasting project presents special challenges, this undertaking was most notable for its unusually unique structural design, tight clearances, and high risk to adjacent structures.

Jan 1, 2003

By Pierre De Pasquale, Aquilino Antonio Alvarez-Castro

Greenhouse gas emissions are now an essential issue for extractive industries. Actually, lowering of quarry energy consumption and CO2 emissions participates to answer both environmental and financial issues. The “EE-Quarry” European project, supported by the European Commission (EE stands for Energy Efficient), develops a new and highly effective modelling and monitoring Energy Management System technique to improve Energy Efficiency and move to a low CO2 emission rate in the nonmetallic mineral industry.

Jan 1, 2016

The first principle one usually Learns about blasting is that cunpetence in this field is best gained by experience in making blasts rather than by reading a book or by listening to a lecture. The reason for this is that there are a large number of variables affecting blasting results and not all of these can be accounted for by a few rules or a few sets of equations. Even an experienced blaster when operating in a new area, may have to make one or two shots just to acclimate himself to the new conditions with which he is faced.

Jan 1, 1989

By D. J. Goodings, R. J. Bonenberger, H. U. Leiste, W. L. Foumey

This paper describes a series of two-dimensional tests conducted and filmed with a high-speed (500 frames per second) video camera. The purpose of these tests was to provide a better understanding of the processes involved in creating craters and channels in water covered soils with explosives.

Jan 1, 2000

By B Mohanty, G Ludwig

A thorough assessment of development drilling and blasting practice was carried out at two underground mines at INCO operations in Thompson, Manitoba. The study showed that significant improvement in productivity can be achieved through careful selection of explosives and loading practice, and modifications of the standard blast lay-out. The analysis involved assessment of the effectiveness of various perimeter blasting methods, employing selected explosives and loading practice in both jumbo and jack-leg rounds. The blasting pattern as well as burden and spacing were varied to determine their effect on the blast results. The various types of explosives used were, pneumatically loaded ANFO, with and without detonating cord tracing, extra-strength detonating cord, and slurry and emulsion explosives with and without cord tracing. The study also dealt with various means to achieve increased rate of advance in both jumbo and jack-leg rounds. The diagnostic measurements consisted of VOD, 'burn' marks or half-barrels on perimeter wall, and blasting vibrations. The effects of geology, firing sequence, blast lay-out, and drill hole deviation on the final results were also examined. The results of the study have been shown to have very important bearing on the design of development round blasting.

Jan 1, 1998

By Douglas A. Anderson

The simplest method used to predict ground vibration from blasting is scaled distance -the distance from a blast divided by the square root of the Pounds per delay. Pounds per delay is defined as the number of pounds of explosive detonated within an 8 millisecond (ms) interval. Based upon this definition, regression plots of peak particle velocity vs. scaled distance have been used to determine likely values of peak particle velocity.

Jan 1, 1989

By John A. Franklin, Tom C. Palangio, Norbert H. Maerz

No blast evaluation is complete without fragmentation measurements which until now were inaccurate, costly, time consuming and created delays in production. “WipFrag.s”is a fully automated PC based fragmentation analysis system that uses digital photo analysis techniques to measure broken rock. Fragmentation can be measured in minutes using compact videocameras for image acquisition. Even subtle changes in rack quality can be detected providing the information necessary for pattern optimization, explosives evaluation, timing selection, benchmarking and blast model validation.

Jan 1, 1995

By Cceliksirt, V Erkan

This computer program has been developed under the field conditions for use in control of surface drilling-blasting operations. This paper outlines the relevance of fragmentation to quarrying, open pit mining or road cutting and key features and operating principles of the software (DelPat for Windows 95).

Jan 1, 1998

By Carlos Campos Junior, Leonardo Soares Chaves, Raul Carretero Hoz, Renato Jacome Costa, Davi Bastos Martins de Oliveira

The Vale’s Serra Sul mine, also known as S11D project, is one of the world’s largest open pit iron ore mines, located in Brazil’s Amazon region. The mine produces around 90 Mt of high-quality iron ore annually. Its unique orebody enabled the S11D project to adopt a truckless mining system with In-Pit Crushing and Conveying (IPCCs) for ore exploitation and waste stripping. The IPCCs system requires crushing the waste, mainly composed by the jaspilite lithology, and is also conveyed to waste deposits several kilometers away from the mine. Due to Amazon’s environmental restrictions, the project was designed with preliminary geological knowledge, leading to the installation of primary crushers not designed for the hardest jaspilite, with uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) up to 500 MPa. This resulted in low waste crushing performance, affecting stripping ratio and threatening future production. A project was developed to improve the fragmentation of the jaspilite, allowing higher waste IPCC production, and reducing the risk to the production due to low performance of waste crushing and conveying. The first challenge was the independence of the geological and the geomechanical models, while only the geological model was considered in blast designs, the geomechanical model describes six waste groups of jaspilite classified according to their strength. A new geological model was then created to incorporate the geomechanical classification, allowing different blasting design according to the rock strength of the jaspilite. The blasting pattern on most compact jaspilite was reduced 27%, from 22m² to 16m² in 9 7/8” diameter holes, with a proposed theoretical reduction of 23% of the P80, from 326mm to 250mm. The second challenge was the implementation of the new design, as this pattern size and the high powder factor (2.9 kg/m3) were paradigms for such a large iron ore mine. The measured results have shown 25% reduction of the P80, the crushing rate was increased by 17% (230t/h), saving around $2.4 million annually in crushing and conveying system maintenance.

Jan 21, 2025

By Dimitri Frantzos, Stewart Thompson, Ed Skiba, Hans Tammemagi

On behalf of Acres International we would like to thank Frank Chiappetta of Blasting Analysis International for inviting our organization to participate in this state-of-the-art course on blasting analysis techniques.

Jan 1, 1989

By Stanley Griff, William Herrera, William O. Seals

"The Navy initiated liquid propellant research in the early 1940's. The first promising Navy liquid propellant, Otto Fuel II, was developd in the early 1950 as a potential torpedo fuel. Later, the Navy developed a HAN based liquid propellant designated NOS-365, a hydroxylammonium nitrate, isopropylammonium nitrate and water formulation. A large gas volume generated by this propellant produced a large wake behind the torpedo. As one can readily understand, this negated the useof the propellant for this application. Recognizing the large gas volume as a desirable propulsion system for guns, the Navy embarked upon a gun propellant proqam. Utilizing a bulk loaded gun sysytem, the program failed when the gun was destroyed by the propellant detonating."

Jan 1, 1990

By Mark A. Williams

"This paper was originally intended to be a presentation of a case study of two surface bituminouscoal mines in the southern Appalachian coal fields located within five miles of each other. These mines were nearly identical in every aspect from geologic setting to equipment application. Althoughrepresentatives from each mine desired to participate in the preparation of this paper through support in providing background information and in review and editing, it was later concluded that, due to the environmental sensitivity associated with each mine, it may not have been a good decision to present this case study in a public forum."

Jan 1, 1994

By Hans Perlid

In the handling of emulsion explosives pumping is a key operation. A number of serious accidents has shown that pumping can be a risky operation and should be carefully considered and investigated. This is the background behind a series of pump tests carried out by NITRO NOBEL.

Jan 1, 1996

By Scott Rosenthal, Logan Connolly

Butte, Montana holds a prestigious place in the history of mining, deemed “The Richest Hill on Earth,” containing a plethora of underground mines. The Orphan Boy/Orphan Girl underground mines, on the western side of Butte, operated from 1895-1956 producing zinc, lead, silver, and manganese. Today, the Orphan Boy mine is part of Montana Tech’s Underground Mine Education Center (UMEC) and the Orphan Girl mine houses the World Museum of Mining. Underground development in the Orphan Boy mine continues to progress as students from Montana Tech receive hands-on underground training; in addition, the UMEC is a multi-disciplinary research facility. Repeated underground blasting occurs in close proximity to old mine workings (wood supports installed circa 1950 or earlier). Research began to determine the impact of underground blasts on nearby pre-existing structures. Using the ISEE Field Practice Guidelines for Blasting Seismographs, one seismograph monitors the predominately-wooden structures to measure their response during each underground blast and one seismograph positioned on the surface to monitor surface structure response to the blast. This paper presents the findings of the research conducted to date for the project. The paper includes analysis of the research data, and conclusions determined from the research. Recommendations for the future work are included as well.

Jan 1, 2018

By Quentin Rhoton

To benefit two endangered fish species, waterfowl and other wildlife, and water quality in the lake and downstream, the decision was made to remove levees that had been in place since the 1950s. Because the levee material was mainly dredged up lake bottom peat, it was decided to pare down the sites chosen for breaching with dozers and trackhoes. This material was spread out onsite instead of expensive removal by dumping elsewhere. Because of the instability of the final pared down levees and the lake level being at a ten-year low, it was decided to use explosives to breach four of the sites. After over five months of earthmoving and two weeks of loading holes, the levees were detonated the day before Halloween, 2007. Somehow pumpkins showed up to be part of the explosive activities.

Jan 1, 2009

The common approach of designing blasts on a trial and error basis is quickly coming to an end. When utilizing the full scale blast environment, trial and error can quickly become cost prohibitive and leaves much to be desired in terms of true blast diagnostics. In these situations testing is usually only continued until a perceived improvement is achieved and when the gross undesirables in blast results are removed. This does does not preclude, however, that further improvements of up to 100% or more can not be obtained.

Jan 1, 1991

By Alain Blanchier, Gilles Gomez

Neighborhood pressure on quarries has become urgent to deal with quarry managers and operators must apply the most recent technologies and communicate it for long shelf life time exploitation, the quarry in which the work is located in urban or suburban environments needs to take into account blasting rules as well as site environment. The main problems to be addressed are:

Jan 1, 2009

By Stephen Mansfield, Johannes Schoeman

In August 2006 a technical alliance was formed between Orica Mining Services and Century Mine to provide blasting solutions. The alliance is in the form of a Rock to Specification (R2S™) service, one of Orica’s Blast Based Services (BBS™). The ultimate goal was to facilitate the rapid expansion of material movement from 26 to 41M m3 (34 to 53M yd3) per annum while maintaining a reliable ore supply to the mill.

Jan 1, 2010

By Daniel P. Lathrop, Leslie C. Taylor, William L. Fourney

Except when the target is on the surface, e.g. a tank track, the most important loading mechanism from a buried charge on a target above it is the impact of soil propelled at the target by the expanding gas from the explosion. Detonation of a shallow buried explosive generally yields an unstable interface between the rising soil and the air which appears to be the result of Richtmyer-Meshkov instability. Irregular “fingers” of saturated sand extend into the air above a more generalized dome of soil. These fingers move at a much higher velocity than the material between them at smaller stand off distances. As a result, the local load on the target at positions on the target at the same distance from the charge may vary by 50% or more from shot to shot or even within a single shot. This variation requires a large design safety factor to assure the integrity of design of mine-resistant vehicles.

Jan 1, 2009

By Charles Barnhart

This paper is a discussion of the causes of deflagration in cast blasting and a description of a project intended to demonstrate how changes in six critical parameters contribute to the deflagration chemical reaction. Control of these parameters is key to solving the nitrogen dioxide “orange smoke” problem. Preliminary results of an investigation into the development of a technology addressing the problem of atmospheric releases of nitrogen dioxide during cast blasting in surface mine operations are described. The project is funded by a $600,000 Small Business Innovative Research grant from the National Science Foundation and an $80,000 Abandoned Coal Mine Land Reclamation Program grant from the state of Wyoming. The presentation will address the measures required to control the blast chemical reaction so that it does not produce nitrogen dioxide through deflagration. Experimental blast data will be focused on a new shaped charge detonation system designed to instantaneously bring the powder column to maximum velocity of detonation (VOD), thus insuring efficient detonation of the entire colulnn.

Jan 1, 2003