New blast damage criteria for underground blasting

A set of new blast damage criteria has been developed with special reference to blasthole mining operations, for assessing damage by incorporating the vibration level rock properties, site characteristics and the effects of ground supper? systems. The main objective of this work was to provide a database with reasonable accuracy for use in optimizing blast design, numerical analysis and ground control expert system module development. The new damage criteria allow one to estimate the degree of damage to rock structures in terms of a dimensionless parameter defined as Blast Damage Index (BDI). This allows for the description of blast damage in a unified form, and facilitates the development of codes for numerical modelling to express the degree of blast damage universally. A number of field investigations from several slope production and slot opening blasts at a large underground base metal mine were carried out to verify the developed index. The results show a good correlation between the observed damage and the type of damage predicted from the BDI values. Practical measures are also provided for minimizing blast damage in large underground blasthole mining operations.