Citation

Rajmeny P, Shrimali R. Int. J. Rock Mech. Mining Sci. 2019; 113: 142-149.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijrmms.2018.12.004

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Blasting process causes deleterious effects on a mine and affects stability and pace of production if not properly designed and controlled. Mine productivity warrants for larger sized blasts while mine stability calls for imposing control measures to curb vibrations to acceptable level. The situation gets grim in the mines, specially the open pits, traversed with numerous prominent geological structures like faults, shears, etc. The blast damage inflicted upon such geological structures is difficult to be measured by conventional techniques like mapping, drilling core, etc. because of in-accessibility rendered to these fault site due to blast damage. In order to investigate response of such geological faults to blast vibrations circumventing these problems, applicability of slope stability radar deployed at Rampura Agucha mine (RAM) for slope stability monitoring was extended to capture sliding movement of faults also. During the investigation, three faults situated on hang wall of the RAM open pit were monitored for sliding movement caused by a number of blasts (20−30) carried out in their vicinity while the corresponding level of blast vibrations generated was calculated by predictor equation established in the area. Analysis of the instant observations revealed a definite threshold value of ground vibrations triggering the fault sliding across all the three experiments depicting consistency of the investigation. Secondly, with rise of level of ground vibrations, the magnitude of sliding movement increases linearly with varying degree of correlation. The results of current investigation would be of great value to designing control blast in other mines traversed with geological faults.

Language: en

Keywords

Maximum charge per delay; Peak particle velocity; Radar technology; Sliding movement