Analysis of effect on vibration and air blast in rock quarrying

Abstract

Blasting induced ground vibration occurring in the quarries has ecome a serious environmental issue in Sri Lanka. To achieve high production targets the number of blasts has increased in the quarries and, therefore, mitigate measures to minimize the detrimental effects of the vibrations have to be identified. This research project on rock blasting was carried out to design a suitable indicating system to predict the ground vibrations and air blasts. In order to assess the variation of intensity of the ground vibration and the air blast over pressure, ground vibrations and air blasts results from two different types of explosives on different types of rocks were monitored. Statistical analysis of the data sets found a high level of confidence on the best fitting empirical relationship between peak particle velocity and scaled distance. By that two site-specific factors were established. A comparison of the analytical work revealed that the level of ground vibration varies significantly with the changing of charge weight per delay, explosive type, rock type and the distance from blasting point to monitoring point.