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By Saeed Karimifard, Saman Nouranian, Shahram Tafazoli, Bahram Sameti, Frank Chu, Caitlin McKinnon, Tetiana Konstantynivska, Glen Turner

We propose a particle size analysis solution for haul trucks that does not impact current operational workflows. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D imaging technology, our solution reliably localizes and identifies haul trucks as they drive by, then accurately calculates the particle size distribution of the visible material in each truck load. In this paper, we identify the challenges of designing and implementing the proposed solution and explain the strategies we employ to overcome these. We also discuss a method for boulder detection that leverages the existing deep learning architecture to significantly reduce crusher downtime caused by oversized rocks

Feb 1, 2020

By Zheng Deming, Li Hongwei, Lei Zhan, Dai Chunyang

This paper introduces the application of a digital electronic detonator in the demolition blasting of largescale (LS) and long delay time (LDT) frame-shear structure buildings. The whole building to be demolished by blasting is an L-shaped frame shearing structure. Some parts of these buildings have a large length along the direction of collapse, so the detonation delay of the column is longer. To ensure the building is successfully blasted and demolished, a digital electronic detonator detonation system is adopted. In the design of the detonating network, full use is made of these characteristics of the digital electronic detonator, such as flexible installation, high precision of delay before blast, and dedicated testing equipment to check the reliability of the network. These advantages ensure the damage of the load-bearing structure is within the blasting gap and that the accuracy of the collapse time of the building, which not only guarantees the collapse effect of the building, but also provides strong technical support for improving the intrinsic safety of the blasting operation and the supervision of the flow direction of the detonation, these research be provide reference for the application of digital electronic detonators in similar projects.

Jan 1, 2019

By William C. Lane

The Pacific Northwest has an abundance of seamy, coarse granite and basalt rock. It is used primarily for road construction. Small quarries are opened nearest the road work to cut the cost of hauling. The crushers are portable. Small diameter holes 2 1/2" to 3 1/2" are placed close together to insure proper fragmentation. It is not unusual to load and shoot 100 to 700 holes 40' deep.

Jan 1, 1986

By Dean Nichols, Matt Ortel

Explosive accidents in the United States have brought increased attention to emergency operation plans (EOP) at all facilities that manufacture, transport, or store hazardous materials – particularly explosive materials. Explosions are sudden, powerful, and complex events that are difficult to characterize in terms of the thermal, over pressure, and debris effects. Industry, regulatory, and public officials require emergency response planners to not only anticipate the blast effects of an explosion, but also to prepare an appropriate response.

Jan 1, 2016

By Robert B. Hopler

Reefs, exposed rocks, and fast currents made the Hell Gate section of New York's East River a treacherous passage ever since man attempted to sail through the area. As the harbor's importance grew, attempts to improve the channel were made, starting in 1851. This paper discusses the first major organized effort to clear the area, which began in 1869 and culminated in a single large blast in September 1876.

Jan 1, 1981

By Dale L. Ramsey

Blasters in the field for years have been faced with the task of plotting blast locations for future reference and calculating scaled distances or seismograph placement from maps,aerial photo's etc.'With the constellation fully operational, GPS provides a satellite signal transmitted to a ground receiver which will display the desired coordinate positioning worldwide, 24 hours a day in any kind of weather conditions. There are a variety of GPS receivers available with varying levels of accuracy. The field trials of a handheld navigational quality instrument for plotting blast and seismograph locations along with other necessary industry related data is the basis of this paper.

Jan 1, 1994

By Gregory Poole

With access to the World Wide Web, many resources are readily available for improving claim reports. With a little time spent on line, a more thorough report can be created. Claimants will accept the conclusions of a report more readily when they can view support information on their own computer, particularly when the support information is not just from blasting related web sites. Some suggested resources are discussed including aerial pictures, local tax maps, topographical maps and home repair web sites. This paper provides suggestions for tracking down support information on the web and information on how to properly reference this information. Case studies of several claim investigations are presented. These are some examples of how a little time spent online provided clear and convincing evidence to support the conclusions of the investigation.

Jan 1, 2006

By Ravi Sahu, Brad Gyngell, Oktai Radzhabov

Design machine learning approach to simulate the process of muckpile throw distribution before blasting.

Feb 1, 2020

By Luis Valentim, Terry Cousins

The goal of a mine is to produce ore at the lowest possible cost with due regard to safety of pemonnel and equipment. The mining process consists of a number of discrete operations such as planning, drilling, blasting,excavation, transportation and crushing. These processes are interrelated and cannot be considered as separate activities when optimising output and minimising cost. In order to optimise the global costs it may therefore be necessary to increase cost in one area such as blasting design and management beyond the norm.

Jan 1, 1998

By Felix Degold, Mark Ganster

Achieving a customer optimized fragmentation by using robust data from new technologies e.g. GPS positions of boreholes, fragmentation analysis to calibrate the geology and fragmentation prediction models. The inclusion of the collected data into the blast’s design makes it possible to accomplish a desired particle size distribution.

Feb 1, 2020

By Tony Rorke, Tamara Wiseman

Due to the advancements in technology it becomes easier to obtain accurate measurements for mining, quarry, and construction operations even in the most remote places. The use of off-the-shelf photogrammetric imaging technology and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more common in the mining industry for blast design and surveying. Pattern optimization, face profiles, pre and post blast volumetric, stockpile measurements and mine mapping are all areas where these technologies can be used with ease.

Jan 1, 2015

By Luis Valentim, John E. Wiegand

Highwall or face profiling has long been used to facilitate the design and placement of front row blastholes to ensure optimum burdens. Traditionally, a large number of laser measurement points obtained from the rock face or highwall, were input in profiling software packages. This method can be time consuming and requires access to the rock face with a complete view of the highwall, to be successful. Stereo photography has also been used to generate the rock face surface, but this method also requires access to the highwall (and pit floor in some instances) for measurement of reference targets or points.

Jan 1, 2016

By Jason Ryan, Stephen Harria

Q.E.D. (QED) is a blast design and evaluation model that allows full three-dimensional design specification including the development of unique “live” terrains and an unlimited variety of complex charge configurations. QED’s analysis package allows the examination of likely outcomes resulting from changing various design variables in terms of vibration, fragmentation, rock-mass damage and muck-pile profile. Especially applicable to use cautious blasting applications, QED’s damage model uses vibration to estimate rock damage beyond excavation boundaries. This relates directly to operations such as Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada, where damage beyond the excavation perimeter must be tightly controlled. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) h as b een studying a site at Yucca Mountain, NV to determine its suitability for long term storage of nuclear waste. The main mechanism of waste isolation will be the natural barrier of the host rock Total Systems Performance Assessment (ISPA) is used to model the excavation design and its behavior over time. Of importance to TSPA is quantifying the condition of the rock-mass before and after excavation. Ideally, there should be no excavation-induced changes to the rock-mass’ structure (removing the requirement to model the effects). At the least it may be possible to keep excavation-induced damage far enough away from waste packages so that modeling of these effects will not be required. QED can calculate a prediction of the extents of blast induced damage to the rock-mass. By using this metric as a design parameter, it may be possible to complete excavation of the repository more rapidly and inexpensively than previously thought, without jeopardizing the structural integrity of the waste containment areas or requiring blast damage to be modeled by the TSPA. This paper will explain the structure of the QED blast modeling system and show the analysis of historical data from Yucca Mountain. Processing of the historical data and the subsequent results will demonstrate how blast modeling can be used on an ongoing basis to assist the excavation process at Yucca Mountain.

Jan 1, 2000

By George P. Schivley

The careful positioning of the drill rigs that drill the holes into which explosives are then loaded is critical to the success of the subsequent blast. Today a system of satellites in space, each transmitting radio signals, is being used to provide the data to allow for tracking and positioning of various types of ground-based mobile equipment. The system is the Global Positioning System or GPS for short. This paper focuses on the application of GPS to surface mining and in particular the navigating of rotary drills from hole-to-hole and their final precise positioning to drill each blast hole.

Jan 1, 1996

By Yang Jun, Qu Mei, Zheng Yao-wu, Chi Li-yuan

Due to the necessity of the prediction of blasting seismic effect around strip mine bench blasting area, the paper provides a method to predict the blasting seismic effect by employing the superposition of seed waveform at different monitoring points. The method assumes that blasting vibration waveform per hole is similar to seed waveform at monitoring point. Therefore seismic wave consists of the superposition of the waves from all of blast holes. Firstly, via sensors multiple seed waveforms can be achieved at different distances from signature hole. Then, by using the given dose and the distance, the vibration waveform of a certain blast hole can be calculated by the corresponding seed waveforms. Finally, the initiation delay time interval per hole is added to the propagation time to the predicting point. The predictive waveform at the whole blasting area can be obtained by superimposing all of the single waveforms. Considering the vibration waveform of a single blast hole changes greatly with the distance, under different distances condition the seed wave employed to superimpose is achieved from the similar distance. The experiments demonstrate that based on the method the predictive vibration waveform and spectrum are basically consistent with monitoring results around near-field blast. Compared with single seed wave method, the superposition method of multiple seed wave is more reliable to predict the duration of blasting vibration, the peak particle velocity, dominant frequency and frequency distribution.

Jan 1, 2015

By A B. Jr Nunn, W C. Gould

Good community relations is a major concern at this central Virginia aggregate quarry. In this paper, the authors describe the use of a new electric millisecond delay initiation system that has reduced the average level of vibration by 27% since its use began in late 1984.

Jan 1, 1986

By Thomas Leonard, Philip R. Berger, Bryan E. Papillon

Bardon Trimount Inc., a large producer of aggregate, crushed stone, and concrete, was experiencing significant public opposition to its five quarries in the Boston area. It was believed by the authors that this opposition could be significantly lessened if the total number of blasts per week were reduced. Although the blasting company at these quarries, Austin Powder Company, contended that this could easily and safely be accomplished by increasing the size of the blasts, regulations precluded this alternative by limiting the total amount of explosives that could be used per blast.

Jan 1, 1996

By Thomas Leonard, Philip R. Berger, Bryan E. Papillon

Bardon Trimount Inc., a large producer of aggregate, crushed stone, and concrete, was experiencing significant public opposition to its five quarries in the Boston area. It was believed by the authors that this opposition could be significantly lessened if the total number of blasts per week were reduced. Although the blasting company at these quarries, Austin Powder Company, contended that this could easily and safely be accomplished by increasing the size of the blasts, regulations precluded this alternative by limiting the total amount of explosives that could be used per blast.

Jan 1, 1996

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.

By Jason Rock, Rob Thompson, Lee Julian

This paper presents an innovative shift in inhibited bulk products with specific reference to their manufacture and application.

Feb 1, 2020