Assessment of the Effect of Blast Hole Diameter on the Number of Oversize Boulders Using ANN Model

Abstract

Now-a-days, blasts are planned using large diameter blast holes. The loading density (kg/m) and subsequently the energy available for the breakage of the rockmass increase with the diameter. The in-hole velocity of detonation (VoD) of non-ideal explosive also boosts up with the increase in diameter till the optimum diameter is reached. The increase in the energy content and in-hole VoD cause a sizable effect on the rock fragmentation. The effect can be assessed by counting the number of oversize boulders. This paper explains as to how the technique of artificial neural network modeling was used to predict the number of oversize boulders resulting from ANFO and SME blasts with blast holes of different diameters. The results from ANFO blasts indicated that there was no significant variation in the number of oversize boulders with the diameter whereas a perceptible variation was noticed in case of SME blasts with the change in the diameter. The change in the number of oversize boulders in ANFO blasts was negligible because mean energy factor remained almost same even when the diameter of the blast holes was altered. The decrease in the number of oversize boulders in SME blasts was on account of increase in mean energy factor when the blast hole diameter was increased. The increase in the in-hole VoD due to increase in the diameter of the hole was not found to have an effect on the generation of oversize boulders as this increase was not substantial both in SME and ANFO blasts.

Mine Induced Airblast prediction: An Application of Chaos Game Optimization based soft computing approaches

“…The diameter of the blast holes, their spacing, and their depths, as well as the kind of explosives used and the charge weight have all been explored by the researchers. For instance, Dhekne et al conducted research on the influence of blast hole width on my air blast and discovered that increasing the diameter of the blast hole might help minimise air overpressure [15].…”

“…The CGO as other metaheuristic optimization algorithm techniques generates a set of solutions know as eligible seeds "X" as defined in Eq. (13)(14)(15)(16).…”

Improvement of small scale dolomite mine blast fragmentation efficiency using hybrid artificial intelligence and soft computing approaches-A case study

“…Dhekne et al developed an ANN model for measuring the number of boulders originating from the blasts in limestone quarries using 300 recorded blasting data. The input parameters consider for model are; hole diameter, burden, spacing, hole depth, stemming length, the quantity of explosive, style of explosive, row number, and hole number per row [27]. Shi et al likewise proposed a regression methodology using support vector machines (SVMs) to predict rock blast fragmentation in different mines based [28].…”

Practical Guidelines for Utilizing WipFrag Software to Assess Oversize Blast Material Using Both Orthomosaic and Digital Images

“…To investigate the effect of blast parameters on oversize material generation, Dhekne et al (2016) assessed the relationship between blast generated boulder size and blast hole diameter. They discovered that variations in hole diameter size had no effect on the e ciency of in-hole velocity of detonation (VoD), as determined by oversize boulder number counting.…”