Guidelines for industrial rock blasting

Abstract

Under all circumstances "Industrial Blasting" needs to be carried out without inflicting disastrous affects on the neighbourhood. If it is carried out considering engineering properties of rock mass being blasted and with the proper quantification of blastability of explosives blasting can be done without inflicting any adverse affects caused by ground vibrations, ecological damage and also maintaining air blast overpressure below human tolerance levels. It is widely recognized that two aspects such as structural damage and human response are the ones which merit particular attention in surface mine and construction blasting. Under such circumstances blasting has to be carried out in a well designed manner. The affect of engineering geological properties of rock mass in blast designs and the role of quarry factor in blasting are discussed in this paper. The paper also describes the importance of the establishment of site constants for quarries. These factors will facilitate the design of better bench blast geometries, determination of maximum instantaneous charge for required ground vibration which will affect least environmental damage/noise control thus leading to better blasting practices.