VNIMI’s Division in Kemerovo, Kemerovo, Russia

P. V. Grechishkin, Director, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, pv_grechishkin@mail.ru

The author discusses an approach to determination of blast design parameters meant to reduce fly rock intensity owing to induced fracturing and softening of rock mass. The article proposes a set of solutions to integrate safety and efficiency of pre-splitting into a single system of conditions imposed on blast design to ensure: stress reduction in cross-section of a mine opening owing to coalescence of cracks generated by blasting in adjacent blastholes; prevention of splitting-off due to the limited space left between the charge bottom and the free surface; adjustment of the charge-to-free surface distance using the value of blasthole spacing from the first condition. For all three cases, the original equations are constructed to relate the limiting stresses in rock mass surrounding a blasthole and the pressure of explosion gases. As a result, a system of inequalities is obtained to find numerically any parameter of blast design under specific conditions (usually the length and diameter of an explosive charge) to ensure safe and efficient blasting. The obtained technique was tested in the conditions of the Internatsionalny Mine of ALROSA, where pilot blasting operations made it possible to significantly reduce fly rock and gas emission in gas-saturated rock mass.

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