Software assisted bench blast optimization

Abstract

Blasting activities in mines and quarries have been placing significant emphasis on the ability to tailor fragmentation to improve downstream process. Achieving the optimum blast design for a particular rock mass type can be an expensive and time consuming procedure. Also in many of these operations, the impact of fines and blast design has been clearly identified. The need to be able to predict the degree of fines from blasting has driven the development of an improved engineering model. Over the past few years, many countries such as Australia, USA, Canada, UK and Russia have been using Numerical Modeling softwares for optimize bench blast designing. However, in Sri Lanka up to now, these methods are not being used. In Sri Lanka, ordinary blasting techniques which are based on past experience are practiced. The outcome of this study shows that bench blasting operations can be optimized by means of JKSimBlast software.