Search Documents

By Frank Hirthammer

The paper explains the procedure of implementing Track & Trace solutions for manufacturers of explosives based on customer experiences. By using concrete examples, the process from project start to implementation is described. Lessons learned from the experiences of European explosives manufacturers are presented.

Feb 1, 2020

By Aloke Verma, R. Singh, S. Jana, C. Sawmliana, P. Pal Roy

On July 21, 2004, a trial blast using electronic detonators was conducted in India for the first time in an opencast mine at Pundi-E Quarry of TISCO, West Bokaro. Orica-IEL conducted the test using electronic detonators. To provide necessary technical feedback on wider applicability, CMRI scientists also participated in the trial blast.

Jan 1, 2006

By Sushil Bhandari, Amit Bhandari

Drilling and Blasting are core operations in a mine. They impact all the downstream operations and their costs. Digital technologies exist for optimizing both drilling and blasting for many years. However, these technologies have largely been non-integrated and non-real time. This gap results in sub-optimal drilling and blasting operations. Also traditionally focus has been on optimizing individual areas (drilling or blasting and subsequent subsystems). Industry has largely lacked real time or near real time integration available to the user in the field and in the office. 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. On the drilling side, this paper describes the ability to capture drill logs, plod reports etc. Also actual drilling information in the field using a mobile device and its real time synchronization with a blast designer to provide visibility of expected fragmentation and vibration levels based on the drilling done. Key parameters such as hole ID, design depth, actual depth, hole status, designed and actual charge (length and weight), designed and actual stemming length are captured. The case study also highlights the challenges in technology adoption and implementation in mining in drilling and blasting. Making drill and blast results predictable should be the desired direction. Also digital technology tool adoption has been seen at the biggest miners – not so much in mid-sized miners or drill and blast contractors. Benefits of this platform on the safety side are highlighted including predictions on safety parameters and appropriate alerts if blast safety parameter / clearance zones are not met. The safety parameters are made available visually to the operator using maps and / or on drone images. Future possible improvements in the digital technology platform at the site are also highlighted including greater possible automation.

By H. S. Venkatesh, G. Gopinath, R. Balachander, G. C. Naveen

Punatsangchu Hydroelectric Project Authority is constructing 1020 MW underground hydroelectric project in Bhutan. The project envisages construction of concrete dam, Desilting Chamber, Head Race Tunnel, Power House Complex and Tail Race Tunnel. Tunneling is one of the major activity in any underground projects as they are driven for multiple activities. By and large the tunnels are a major part of connecting networks from surface to caverns/underground working sites. Many tunnels in hydropower project are part of water conducting systems and one such important tunnel is the Tail Race Tunnel in this project and had to be excavated in thinly foliated rockmass conditions by D&B method.

Feb 1, 2020

By William Reisz

Managing the blast site at almost any operation can be a daunting task. There are so many details that must be observed, understood, and acted upon. It goes without saying that there are no two locations that have the exact same challenges and concerns. The level and the extent of these challenges can vary widely.

Jan 1, 2014

By R Mancini

Explosive charge action on the medium is intrinsically dynamic (fast rising and fast vanishing). On the contrary, information available on rock strength is drawn from static behaviour, and it's commonly used to characterise the rock, even in blasting problems.

Jan 1, 1995

By Brandon Fryman, Josh Hoffman, Rhys Baker

A post-detonation debris collection project was led in conjunction with a large ammonium nitrate(AN) railcar detonation conducted by the Department of Homeland Security-Transportation Security Administration, Department of Defense-Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, Sandia National Laboratories, and the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Grounds. This important work will aid in underpinning algorithms used in a Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) tool. The test also provided valuable data about the effects and consequences following an AN detonation. The test took place at the Utah Dugway Proving Grounds on April 27, 2018 and the debris collection was conducted the following two weeks with an average of 20 persons per day and an approximate total of 1,400 manhours. A paper was presented at the 2019 ISEE Conference on the collection efforts, challenges, and lessons learned. A complete data analysis effort was completed on the test data in 2019 that resulted in updates to the QRA Railcar Potential Explosion Site (PES)model and AN engine. The analysis included an assessment of the debris data resulting from the Derailed test. This paper is meant to serve as a summary of the analysis effort and findings and as an update to the previously presented lessons learned from the debris collection and analysis effort.

By Raúl Carretero de la Hoz, Leonardo Soares Chaves, João Paulo Soares Toneli, Francisco Felipe da Silva Dantas, Marcos Peres Lopes, Marcus Vinicius da Silva Gonçalves

The mining activity results in environmental impact and thus requires the adoption of techniques to minimize its effects. The rock blasting process is required to break up and move the rock enabling the haulage of the material, however, it might also cause undesirable effects such as flyrock, overbreak, excessive ground vibration or air-blast at the neighboring communities and damage to civil or geological structures located nearby. The Serra Sul mine, commonly referred to as S11D project, has obligations to preserve two natural tropical montane lakes and several maximum relevance natural cavities whose legal preservation radius represents constraints to the mine development and operation. Controlling measures are undertaken to ensure preservation of the cavities, especially during rock blasting stage, with limitations of the maximum instantaneous charge (MIC) and ground vibration control. The demand for high productivity and the large areas with hundreds of blastholes to charge are challenging factors to the charge control. This work presents the development and field application of a map for limiting explosive charges in the rock blasting process at the Serra Sul mine, used for the definition of maximum charges according to the blast location, ensuring the preservation and compliance with the defined ground vibration limits for each cavity. The map is applied at the mine for every blast and when there is a charge constraint, the map helps to define the areas with different charging profiles in the field contributing to higher charging productivity.

Jan 21, 2025

By Tom Pfitzer, Alice Correa, Meredith Hardwick

The past decade has brought significant changes in the use of risk-based criteria for safety within the U.S. Department of Defense. The Range Commanders Council (RCC) chartered a working group to develop and define risk acceptance criteria for protecting the general public and mission essential personnel from debris from launch ranges. This working group has continued to develop and update RCC Standard 321 as the needs of the ranges and range users have evolved. A revision to RCC Standard 321 is near finalization and will include casualty criteria, guidelines for assessing risks due to other flight hazards in addition to inert debris, and an overall risk management process for range safety. This paper reports on work in progress and includes several precedents which may prove important to the explosives safety community.

Jan 1, 2007

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 K Taylor

Small scale tests have been conducted in blasting vessels in the laboratory, where the effects of explosive composition, charge diameter, explosive confinement as well as additives to the explosive were examined on NO, NO2, CO and CO2 production. Fumes were analyzed continuously using a flue analyzer, providing analysis every 15 seconds. The results were compared to previous work conducted in the laboratory and to literature findings. It was found that the type of the explosive was the most dominant factor with emulsion explosives producing significantly less amounts of toxic gases. ANFO was shown to always produce nitrogen oxides, even when fuel rich. Tests were also conducted by detonating explosives in broken rock, simulating the release of products of detonation during the formation of a muckpile. Products of detonation were affected by the presence of atmospheric air or rock around the charge. Gaseous products of detonation migrated through the rock piles at different rates, resulting in a change of toxicity values over time. In the small scale experiments, CO appeared to travel faster than CO2 while NOX was not identified. Analysis of the gases that were released during digging, several hours after the blast, resulted in high temporary concentrations of toxic fumes.

Jan 1, 2014

By María Rocha, Benjamín Cebrián, Roberto Laredo

"Ring blasting designs have to achieve different goals in order to become efficient whether is done in up hole or downhole fashion. Ore recovery/dilution control, fragmentation and drift integrity all have to be taken into account when selecting parameters such as burden, spacing, linear explosive density and stemming. Blast energy simulation allows identifying contours of rock breakage and fragmentation, thuschoosing a combination of spacing at the end of holes and appropriate burden. Also, simulations are keyto concentrate energy levels on the mid part of the ring while making sure there is not too high of energy concentration around the drift, which integrity is needed for a safe ore mucking."

Jan 1, 2017

By Brian Carr

This workshop will display all of the existing products that are available as stemplug devices and discuss the general concept of the use of them. Actual results will be discussed along with several case histories. There will be adequate time for questions and answers.

Jan 1, 2000

By Donald Wagstaff, D. Scott Scovire

The Coeur Rochester Mine is the largest primary silver surface mine in North America. Throughout its 17-year life, gold and silver grades leaving the tertiary crusher have typically been, on average, slightly below the mined bench grades as determined by blast hole assays. On a project-to-date basis, this grade variance is well within industry standards. While these variances are acceptable, mine personnel continue to study ways to further minimize the grade differences. One suspected cause for lower than expected head grades are ore loss and dilution resulting from blast-induced shot movement. In regard to grade control, the underlying design principle for non-electric blasts is the generation of uniform movement of the blasted rock material. Using one or two uniform directions of initiation, ore control methods at Rochester currently include adjusting flag lines on the muckpile in an attempt to account for displacement from original, pre-blast locations. To improve upon standard non-electric blasting practices, a series of evaluation blasts using an electronic initiation system (Orica i-konTM) was conducted in the summer of 2002. The primary objective of the evaluation blasts was to design shots that would segregate the ore and waste blocks into distinct muckpiles. Due to surface delay burning front limitations, truly effective ore and waste segregation blasting is difficult to accomplish with non-electric initiation systems for all but the most basic of ore geometries. The electronic detonator evaluation blasts produced visible boundaries in post blast muckpiles, identified by troughs or low areas, that closely matched the actual locations of pre-blast ore control flag lines based on blast hole assays. By blasting the ore and waste into distinguishable piles that were flagged and excavated accordingly, it is believed that blast-induced ore loss and dilution was reduced.

Jan 1, 2004

By Richard Goodridge, Stephen Thomsqn, S Rodgers, D Tunaley

The mining, quarry and construction industries are facing’new challenges everyday. These challenges can be imposed by economic objectives or through external factors such as extreme geological conditions. Simultaneously, all mines, quarries and construction sites are facing more and more stringent environmental requirements.

Jan 1, 1998

By Boris Belenky, M M. Graevsky, R I. Semigin, A E. Frantov

"In the mining industry, most of stripping and rock fragmentation is performed by blasting. The academician N.V. Melnikov has projected that blasting methods would be used to crush 20% of soft rocks and 80435% of medium and hard rocks. Thus, the volume of blasting will continue to increase.This is especially true for electrical blasting, since this method has a number of well known advantages, and in some cases (e.g. for underground blasting in coal mines) it is the only acceptable method."

Jan 1, 1995

By Roger Favreau, Patrice Favreau

The article reviews the aspects which contribute to the quality of the results from a blast with explosives, namely a good floor, no large blocks, easy mucking, and explains the mechanisms of the blasting process which decide on the quality of these aspects for a given blast method, and how these mechanisms can be simulated from basic principles. It proposes that good fragmentation size distribution can also be important if the rock is going to a crusher, e. g. for the ore in a mine and for the rock excavated in a quarry.

Jan 1, 2012

By Mark S. Stagg, David E. Siskind

The mining industry occasionally blasts near pressurized transmission pipelines and has requested guidance of safe vibration levels and setback distances. the Bureau of Mines and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources cooperated with AMAX Coal Company on a study of coal mine overburden blasting. Five buried and pressurized 250-ft pipeline sections were specifically installed on the Minnehaha Mine highwall near Sullivan, IN for testing to failure. Four welded steel pipes ranging from 6- to 20- in diameter and one 8- PVC water supply pipe were monitored for vibration, strain, and internal pressure for a period of 6 months while production blasting advanced up to the pipeline field. In contrast to previous studies of small-scale blasting representing construction activities, these tests involved overburden blasts of up to 2100 lb per delay in 12-l/4-in diameter holes.

Jan 1, 1996

By Bruce Vandenberg

Two tests were set up as part of the course given by Blasting Analysis International. Both tests were performed using the prototype Velocity of Detonation Recorder (VODR). The prototype has several limitations, which have been rectified for the production units.

Jan 1, 1990

By Ajoy Singh

A study was conducted to investigate the damage potential to underground multi-seam openings caused due to vibration generated by open-pit coal mine blasting. The objective was to recommend optimal explosives weight per delay to be detonated in open-pit blasts to ensure the safety and stability of underground openings. Sixteen blasts with varying charge weights and initiation sequences were conducted at Samleshawari open-pit mine and eighty four blast vibration data were recorded in the Hingir Rampur underground colliery in India. Analysis of vibration data showed that roof of the underground openings vibrated with higher amplitude of vibration compared to pillars and floors. The amplifications of vibration in the roof at the junction were upto 4.3 times the pillar vibration. It was observed that coal chips detached from roof when the peak particle velocity reached 131 mm/s or high. The vibration magnitude recorded was higher in upper seams openings than in below seam openings. Rapid attenuation of vibration was recorded in below-seam openings at similar locations. Appropriate particle-charge weight-distance equations were established to calculate the safe explosive weight per delay to be detonated in open-pit mine for safety of multi-seams workings of underground mine. The support for the galleries and junctions were further modified for the working seams to ensure greater safety.erground Coal Mine

Jan 1, 2012