Study of blast induced ground vibration

Project Title:

Study of blast induced ground vibration

Supervisor:

Dr. Manoj Khandelwal

Dr. Greg You

Contact person and email address:

Dr. Manoj Khandelwal

Email: m.khandelwal@federation.edu.au

A brief description of the project:

The development in mining industry and growth in demand of minerals lead to a considerable increase in the use of explosives for blasting purposes. Explosive materials can be used for breaking up and excavation of rocks as they release huge amount of energy in the forms of pressure and temperature. Although there have been advances in explosive technology, the development in prediction of blasting damages are not complete enough due to the complexity of parameters that characterise rock masses that need to be broken up. A number of vibration predictors were proposed by different researchers for the prediction of blast vibration and  most of them are based on explosive charge used per delay and distance between blast face to monitoring point and due to that, these conventional predictors are not able to predict the blast vibration level in a proficient manner. For the same excavation site, different predictors give different values of safe PPV vis-à-vis charge per delay. It is well known that blast vibration is influenced by blast design, explosive and rock parameters. The proposed project aims to evaluate, assess and propose a new viable blast vibration equation incorporating most of the influencing blasting parameters using dimensional analysis as well as soft computing modelling. The outcome of the project will be useful to enhance the explosive energy utilisation vis-à-vis minimisation of blast nuisances.