| Abstract: | There is a common belief within the blasting community that increasing the burden will increase the blast vibration. In order to test this belief in a direct sense, it would be desirable to fire single blastholes with various burdens and monitor the vibrations at many locations. A review of past literature indicates that such direct tests are rare and only scant data is available. Nevertheless, a detailed analysis of this and associated past work (on small-scale blocks and choke blasts) shows no convincing evidence of an influence of burden on blast vibration. On the other hand, by considering the role of reflected waves in a simple analytical model, reasoning is given to show that the vibration might well be insensitive to burden. In view of the scant data available, it was decided to conduct trials of a direct nature, in which 13 single blastholes were fired to a free face. The burdens chosen were 2.6 m, 5.2 m and 10.4 m, and the vibration was measured at typically 10 locations over the range 5 m to 50 m from each hole. The results clearly show that the vibration is independent of such burdens. Furthermore, a side-by-side comparison of a choke blast with a free-face blast showed that the vibration from the holes in the choke blast was not higher than the vibration from the holes in the free-face blast. The present work also shows that vibration, although insensitive to burden, is not insensitive to the condition (i.e., the degree of damage) of the surrounding rock mass. In this regard, blastholes in undamaged ground produce a significantly higher vibration than blastholes in damaged ground. This might well be the reason why pre splits and drop-cuts are observed to produce relatively high vibrations, i.e., it is not because such blasts typically involve large burdens, but rather that they are usually initiated in relatively undamaged ground. |
