Fragmentation optimization in aggregate quarrying in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Blasting is an essential task in aggregate quarrying industry for rock fragmentation. Rock fragmentation, which is the fragment size distribution of blasted rock material, is used in mining industry as an index to estimate the effect of bench blasting. The extent of rock fragmentation in the blasting process influence the efficiency of all the subsystems such as loading, hauling and crushing in mining operations. To achieve an optimum rock fragmentation a blast with optimized controllable parameters should be designed so that the effects of the uncontrollable parameters could be minimized. Many countries such as Australia, USA, Canada, UK and Russia use Numerical Modelling based software for bench blast simulations, in order to optimize the blasts. However, in Sri Lanka up to now, these methods are not used, and ordinary methods using the experience from previous blasting sequences are practiced. The main objective of this research is to design the most economic blast that will give the optimum fragmentation, using “JKSimBlast – 2DBench” software. To validate the modelling, fragmentations from five blasts were assessed using “Split Desktop” software, and the results obtained were compared with the predictions carried out by JKSimBlast software followed by Kuz-Ram fragmentation model.