Monitoring and control of quarry blasting

This book describes and analyzes the experimental work carried out in El Alto quarry (Spain) within an E.U. funded research project Less Fines Production in Aggregate and Industrial Mineral Industry. Geometry, loading and timing characteristics are given for 35 production blasts and three single blastholes. Face movement was measured in eight of those blasts from targets hanged in front of a blasthole on the highwall. Vibration data recorded with seismographs around the block at both near and far field range are provided for 23 of such blasts and the single blastholes. Fragmentation in the hopper of the bin from images is also monitored. The most outstanding models in the literature for assessing fragmentation, vibration and face movement are applied. Some of these models show poor performance, for instance Kuz-Ram model, while others like the Blair-Armstrong''s Fourier model for predicting the mean particle velocity spectra provide fairly good predictions. Engineering formulas are derived for predicting the face movement, fragmentation and vibrations. Finally the energy balance is calculated for eight blasts in an attempt to guide blast design.