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By Stephen H. Chung

The SABREX computer blast simulation program permits the study of the effective use of explosive energies and predicts the total performance of a blast in terms of:fragment size distribution: muckpile profile; breakage at grade, column and collar with respect to the control case; crack penetration; damage envelope behind and beneath blastholes; a complete cost analysis including explosives, drilling and accessory costs

Jan 1, 1995

By Sam Ammermann, William Heasley

"The mining industry is on an ever accelerating path to complete mechanization. As companiesutilize more sophisticated and efficient methods of blasting, a more thorough look should begiven to the pros and cons of mechanized shaft sinking. Historically, Vertical Shaft SinkingMachines (VSSM) have been capital intensive, making it hard to enter lowest bidder marketssuch as the United States. As advances in safety and technology have occurred, VSSM methodsare becoming increasingly common in many countries outside the United States. Decreasedcapital requirements, a greater amount of competition within the VSSM market along withgreatly improved safety practices, have made it more competitive with traditional drill and blast(D&B) methods. However, VSSM technology has yet to be embraced by the United States. Alarge culture shift will have to occur before VSSM technology will become common in theUnited States. The history, and advent, of raised boring machines will be discussed and how itrelates to the current development of VSSM technology. The researchers will analyze the uniquerisks of D&B methods and how they compare with the unique risks of VSSM technology. Theresearchers will put an emphasis on risks directly affecting the safety of personnel working onthe shaft sinking operation. Many of these risks are identified by contracting companies withregards to geology, relative location of resources and the chosen shaft sinking method. Theresearchers will discuss specific risks a given shaft sinking company will want to consider whenchoosing between D&B and VSSM methods."

Jan 1, 2016

By Paul Sainato

Recruiting and retaining students in the explosives industry is becoming increasingly important each year. With no undergraduate degree in explosives engineering currently available in the United States, it is from other industries and degree disciplines we must recruit. The 2014 annual ISEE conference saw the first anonymous online survey distributed to members of SEE student chapters of the International Society of Explosives Engineers. The survey contained questions about future job and career plans, ideal job placement, expectations of salary and current academic degrees. The purpose of the survey was to determine what these students expect or require from a career in the explosives industry, and their current path to pursue this. This information can help steer recruitment activities and job offers for graduating students. The success for both student response rates and interest from the industry has allowed space for a yearly update of this survey. A second survey was distributed in 2015 and included international students. This paper provides the data from a third online survey distributed to all student members of the International Society of Explosives Engineers, globally. Understanding the main incentives for a student to accept a graduate position as an explosives engineer can help us, as an industry; position ourselves to remain competitive in recruiting against other major degree disciplines.

Jan 1, 2016

By A T. Spathis, M G. Wheatly

Some preliminary dynamic pressure data were obtained from several charges detonated in a tunnel situated in massive granite rock. The context of the work is the potential for desensitisation of explosives, failure of detonators, and sympathetic detonation due to the close proximity of inter-hole and inter-deck explosive charges to each other. Dynamic pressures were measured using piezoelectric gauges in water-filled 45 mm diameter holes adjacent to the charges. Some of the first arrival peak pressures were noisy, and although not fully resolved, may be due to reflections and the physical arrangement of the transducers and their size with respect to the monitoring holes. The estimated peak pressures were between 0.1 to 8.7 MPa at approximate distances of 2.8 to 0.8 m, respectively. Further work is planned with gauges that are disposable, have a higher pressure range, and can be used within a few borehole diameters rather than the piezoelectric gauges used in the present work.

Jan 1, 2016

By Marwan M. Mohammed, Hani S. Mitri, Wilfrid Comeaul, Baoyao Tang

In many parts of the world, rockbursts have become a major problem of mining at depth. As orebodies are being mined deeper, rockburst phenomena have become familiar to deep hard rock mines. Rockbursts are generally characterised by sudden release of energy in a volume of highly stressed rock, which can cause local violent failure of the rock mass around the opening. One method of controlling these failures is to precondition the rock mass by detonating fully confined explosive charges at the appropriate locations. This method known as destress blasting, was first tried in the deep South African gold mines (Roux et al., 1957), and was widely used later in Canada, United States, France, Poland and Japan.

Jan 1, 1999

By Kevin Landey, Eric Gerst

Expanding blast patterns to near the limit of an explosives’ ability to do the necessary amount of work is a common practice to reduce drilling and blasting costs. Choosing less expensive explosives such as ANFO vs. emulsion, bulk product versus packaged product, etc. are also common cost savers. Both practices are only effective as long as the pattern geometries are accurately drilled. However, will pushing the limits on pattern sizes and explosive products produce consistent results at the face, minimize oversize, produce superior fragmentation, and improve crusher throughput? Sometimes, but no amount of explosives can overcome a poorly drilled pattern. Knowing the probable outcome of any changes in drilling and blasting is valuable in achieving success.

Jan 1, 2018

By Brian W. Stump, David P. Anderson, John Wiegand

Mining explosions are designed for a variety of purposes including the fragmentation and movement of materials. The blast design is dependent on the particular application intended and the material properties of the rock. The range of mining applications from hard rock quarrying to coal exposure to mineral recovery leads to a great variety of blasting practices.

Jan 1, 1997

By Dale Ramsey

During Phase IV of our Landfill Mine Stabilization project at a coal burning power generating station, it was determined that a coal barrier pillar separating two abandoned areas of the deep mine had to be breached prior to expansion of the ash disposal area. The proposed plan by the landfill design engineers involved using a high pressure jet cutting tool to cut a slot to allow water flow to an existing industrial waste water treatment facility. Our plan proposed using explosives to breach the pillar from the surface reducing earth disturbance in a high quality watershed while reducing the project cost and accelerating the project time schedule. Many issues surfaced with the proposed change of using explosives. There were a number of lessons learned from this case history and is the primary basis of this paper.

Jan 1, 2003

By Keith Pucalik

Understanding Vibrations fr om Blasting focuses on explaining blast vibrations and their effects on people and homes while keeping an eye on the importance of the use and significance of explosives in our daily lives. Unlike many predecessors, this film will help blasting pro f e s s i o nals explain blast vibrations and address many of the layman’s most fre q u e n t l y asked questions. The film can be used in pubic hearings, given to homeowners during preblast surveys, or played at educational seminars for professionals. The film can also be used after blasting has begun and residents have already experienced vibration events.

Jan 1, 2004

By B. Papillon

There has been a veritable increase in the adoption of electronic detonators in the last few years. Electronic detonators offer several distinctive features over electric and non-el (shock tube) detonators including better timing accuracy resulting in excellent fragmentation and vibration control, certainly key mining parameters. The field programmability also helps in reducing the on-site magazine storage of detonators with diverse fixed delays. A typical electronic detonator may consist of a logic core, a communication interface, storage capacitor(s) and the ignition element. Being electronic components, the electronic detonators may be susceptible to RF or electromagnetic interference (EMI). RF sources are virtually everywhere: cellular phones/towers, radio transmission, microwaves, walkie-talkies, high voltage (HV) transmission cables and wireless networks with their characteristic frequency emissions. Safety issues prevail; e.g., whether the RF interference can cause premature or inadvertent firing whether directly or indirectly. From a reliability perspective, the RF interference may also impact on bus communications, e.g., during the logging, verifying, charging and firing phases. The deleterious communications disturbance may result in a misfire (non-firing of one or more of the detonators) which is terribly inconvenient for the mine operators and even pose a safety hazard.

Jan 1, 2009

By P D. Katsabanis

The dynamic tensile strength of geomaterials is known to be highly dependent on the strain rate of the load applied. This is significant in applications where the material is subjected to shock waves and impact loading. This paper proposes the use of a simplified method to determine the dynamic tensile strength of hard brittle rocks using an explosively impacted version of the Hopkinson Pressure Bar. A compressive stress wave was propagated in a sample, representative of the material of interest, by detonating a small charge at one end of a cylindrical sample. The tension wave, generated upon reflection at the free face, causes spalling in brittle materials. Strains at four points in the specimen were continuously measured and the dynamic tensile strength was determined by applying the one-dimensional wave theory.

Jan 1, 2010

By Unknown

More than 60 years ago Lakota (Sioux) Chief Henry Standing Bear asked Korczak Ziolkowski to create a monument of Crazy Horse in the sacred Black Hills. Today, you can see Standing Bear’s dream has grown into enormous reality. Crazy Horse Memorial, mankind’s largest mountain carving in progress, is being carved in the round and when completed will be 641 feet long and 563 feet high. Crazy Horse is only 17 miles from Mount Rushmore National Memorial, giving South Dakota unique boasting rights for having two extraordinary mountain carvings in such close proximity

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 P D. Katsabanis

According to Persson(1) steady state detonation along a cylindrical charge can be regarded as a self propagating process in which the axial compressive effect of the shock front discontinuity changes the state of the explosive so that exothermic reaction sets in with the requisite velocity.

Jan 1, 1990

By Per-Anders Persson

This chapter deals with the concepts ofshock waves aud detonation waves together, because a detonation wave is really a shock wave, supported by the explosive reaction that the shock wave ignites and propagates as it travels through the explosive material. In the context of rock blasting, furthermore, there is justification for treating shock waves and detonation waves together, because the mechanical effect of the detonation in an explosive in a drillhole in rock is propagated and its effects are spread throughout the surrounding rock by means of a shock wave The overall performance of an explosive in rock blasting or any other application is of course dependent on how much thermal energy is released in the chemical reaction that occurs when the material detonates, and on how much useful mrc!~amcal work the reaction products can do as they expand. A major portion of this chapter deals with the prediction and measurement of explosive performance, a subject which is now still in a process of rapid development.

Jan 1, 1994

By Frank Sames

The control of the environmental effects, especially blast vibration and airblast, has become a dominating planning criterion for most surface blasting operations. Compliance with existing regulations is generally achieved through constraints in the blast design, or monitoring programs. Commonly, blast vibration and airblast signals are rated and compared only by their maximum amplitude and the principal frequency associated with the peak.

Jan 1, 1997

By M. Hokkanen, M. Hagfors

The Finnish Defence Forces has destroyed old and spoilt munitions in open surface mass detonations at Hukkakero fell in municipality of Kittilä, Lapland, since 1988. The technique was learned from Sweden. The destruction camp is organized every year at autumn and it lasts 4-5 weeks. During the disposal period one or two charges are exploded per day. The gross weight of a typical charge varies from 150-250 tons including 15-25 tons of explosives. They mainly consist of TNT, but may also contain smaller amounts of amatol and hexotol. As a booster there have been used 2-3 tons of emulsion explosives.

Jan 1, 2015

By Lon D. Santis

This paper summarizes explosives transportation incident and accident data collected by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) from 1993 to 1998. The paper briefly describes the legislation and regulations that cover hazardous materials transportation. The multimodal incident data collected by the Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) contained 86 incidents involving Class 1 materials during transit. Thirty-two occurred on public highways. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) data showed there were 8 1 motor-vehicle accidents involving explosives. The FHWA Crash datafile extract contained 649 records categorized as involving Class 1 materials although closer analysis revealed that nearly 90% of these did not involve explosives. In both databases, there were no fatalities caused by the explosive materials although 7 fatalities were the result of injuries suffered during the motorvehicle accident. There were also no serious explosions during any of these incidents or accidents. The paper concludes with an analysis of the risk involved with transportation of commercial Class 1 materials on the highway.

Jan 1, 2000

By Braden Lusk, Paul Sainato, Josh Calnan, Hiago Vasconcelos, Luis Felipe Marinho

"Blasting and rock fragmentation is one the most important unit operations in mining. Since itsintroduction into the mine production cycle, mining has become more efficient in mineral production(Hartman, 2002). Widely used with the main objective of breaking rock mass in smaller fragments to be loaded and hauled at a minimum cost, blasting is optimized when stemming materials properly confine drillholes charged with explosives. Halim Cevizci (2013) performed a stemming application using Gypsum plaster, a kind of material that exhibits solid-like behavior when it is dry. Based on his theory, the present article reports an experiment using another type of material that shows similar behavior, non-Newtonian fluids. The primary goal of this study is to measure the confinement effectiveness provided by a non-Newtonian mixture as the stemming component. The study also analyzes the explosives’ energy propagation throughout the rock mass relating to the stemming materials applied. Currently, mining literature recommends the application of dry granular materials in stemming columns, because of its inertial and high frictional effects (Hagan, 1973). However, the test verified that the mixture added to the stemming column was able to reduce energy and gas losses to the atmosphere, because of the liquid’s property of filling voids in the material. The solid-like behavior of the non-Newtonian mixture was investigated for its capability to improve borehole confinement, since the mixture reacts like a solid when under shear stress. The results were compared to those from sand and air stemming applications, configured in different arrangements. It was concluded that the non-Newtonian mixture yielded high results due to its better confinement effectiveness, a reduction of air overpressure, and an increase of the strain propagation and ground vibration throughout the rock."

Jan 1, 2016

By O. Rielo, P. Katsabanis

Traditionally fine aluminum is not used in dry commercial explosives due to the hazard associated with aluminum dust explosions during mixing. An industrial process has been developed which enables the safe use of paint grade Aluminum with ANFO. The addition of fine aluminum particles resulted in increased velocity of detonation of ANFO compositions. Velocities of detonation, in 52mm (2 1/16 in.) diameter confined charges were 20% higher than velocities of detonation of straight ANFO. The detonation performance of fine grained ANFO was not benefited by Al at the diameter tested. Furthermore use of larger Al flakes resulted in decreased velocities of detonation. The results are compatible with the experience of Al addition to high explosives. Tests were also conducted using bio-diesel, finding no substantial difference in the performance of AN fuel explosive compositions which used bio-diesel.

Jan 1, 2009