Underground blasting

By angesom.g

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 Underground blasting
 There are two reasons to go underground and excavate:
 to use the excavated space, e.g. for storage, transport etc.
 to use the excavated material, e.g. mining and quarrying operations.
 Underground blasting uses the same principles as surface bench blasting, except that
with underground blasting there is less space, and thus oversize cannot be so easily
handled.
 Therefore, with underground blasting it is common to use double the powder factor
to ensure fine breakage.
 Modern underground blasting can be separated into the ff types:
1. headings
2. Shaft sinking
3. long-hole stopes
4. mass blasts(ring blasting)
5. pillar recovery
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 1.Headings
 Heading blasting is used for tunnels, development drifts, adits, and room-
and-pillar (R&P) mining.
 The blasts in tunnels and drifts are characterized by the initial lack of an
available free surface towards which breakage can occur;
 Heading blasting has no free face parallel to the blastholes; therefore, it must
create one. This is done by separating the blast into two parts:
 the cut and
 the main blast.
 The cut is designed to provide a free face perpendicular to the face to provide
relief for the rest of the blast (bench blasting using horizontal holes). These
first holes are collectively called the “cut.”

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 Cut type
 Cuts can be classified in two large groups:
 Parallel hole cuts such as:
 burn cut,
 cylindrical cut,
 helical spiral cut etc.
 Angled hole cuts such as:
 pyramid cut
 wedge cut(V)
 drag cut
 fan cut
 There are essentially two types of cuts that are commonly used in heading round
blasting; they are burn cuts and angled cuts. Angled cuts include “V” or wedge
cuts, fan cuts, and drag cuts.

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 Burn cut
 Parallel holes are drilled at right angles to the face in a cluster form.
 Some of the holes left uncharged to give relief to the heavy explosives in
the charged holes.
 This cut is effective in hard, brittle, homogenous ground and breaks
evenly.
 The spacing is 1.5 times the diameter of the uncharged hole.
 The blasting is done in a sequence of hole.

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 burn cut
 Principal advantages of the burn cut are:
1. The depth of the round is not dependent on the working space available for drilling
holes at an angle.
2. The burn cut allows a deep pull even in tough rock formations.
3. It is relatively simple to drill, because all holes are parallel.
4.There is generally less throw with better fragmentation.
5. The resultant muckpile is higher, so it provides a better platform for scaling and
bolting work.
6. Round length may be shortened or lengthened without any difficulty.
 Principal disadvantages of the burn cut are:
1. The burn or relief holes are generally larger than the drill holes in the drill holes in
the round, and therefore require reaming or larger drilling equipment.
2. Drilling and explosives requirements (powder factor) are higher.
3. Drilling must be accurate or results will be unfavorable.

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 Coromant cut
To achieve greater advance in tunnels or drifts of small area, this new type of
parallel hole cut is used.
 It consists of a slot, which is left unloaded with outer cut holes and location
is important.
 The slot is produced by contiguous drilling of two holes.20mm drill rod with
tapper and special drill bit of 57mm diameter.
 Depending upon the nature of rock, only one centre hole may be possible.
 These cuts are mainly used in hard rock formation.

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 cylindrical cut
 The cylindrical cut can be considered a parallel hole cut, and is the most
frequently used in tunnelling and drifting, regardless of their dimensions.
It is considered to be an evolution or perfection of the bum cuts
 This type of cut consists of one or two uncharged or relief blastholes
towards which the charged holes break at intervals. The large diameter
blastholes (65 to 175 mm) are drilled with reamer bits which are adapted to
the same drill steel which is used to drill the rest of the holes.
 The type of cylindrical cut most used is the four section, as it is the easiest
one to mark out and execute.

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 Angled cut
 An angle cut is a group of boreholes drilled at various angles inclined to the free face
to provide as much freedom of movement for the rock as possible.
 Angle cuts generally require fewer holes and less powder-per-round than burn cuts.
However, they are generally more difficult to drill and require more experienced
miners.
 Usually the angle cut will move the rock further down the heading and produce
coarser fragmentation out of the cut area.
 Longer drill steel is required in the cut holes to achieve the same depth as the
surrounding boreholes in the round. In narrow headings it is difficult to drill a
sufficiently wide angle to insure "pulling" the cut.
 Angled cuts are not commonly used because they generally produce less round
advance than a burn cut in a similar heading. The physical application of angled cuts
is also limited by heading dimensions, because only relatively wide headings have
enough room to accommodate the drill head when it is set up for angled drilling. For
these reasons, burn cuts are far more popular than angled cuts.
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 Wedge cut(V)
 Blasthole are drilled at an angle to the face in a uniform wedge formation so
that the axis of symmetry is at the centre line of the face.
 The cut displaces a wedge of rock out of the face in the initial blast and this
wedge is widened to the full width of the drift in subsequent blasts, each
blast being fired with detonators of suitable delay time.
 This type of cut is particularly suited to large size drifts, which have well
laminated or fissured rocks. Hole placement should be carefully
preplanned and the alignment of each hole should be accurately drilled.
 Here, 2 to 4 pairs of holes are drilled to form a wedge , which is starting
from two sides of the drift centre and inclines at an angle less than 45
degree towards the centre to meet the back of the hole along a line.
 Recommended for solid blasting
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 Pyramid cut or diamond cut
 The pyramid or diamond cut is a variation of the wedge cut where the blastholes
for the initial cavity may have a line of symmetry along horizontal axis as well as
the vertical axis
 In this type, four or six shot holes are drived at the middle of the face which at
the end to form a cone or pyramid shape.
 The length of the holes are approximately 15cm more than the other type of
holes.
 The charging is done mainly at the apex of these cut holes, so that
it creates a face to fire the next with delays.
 These cuts are generally used for blasting hard rock mass

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 Drag cut
 This type used for laminated rocks and for controlled blasting in a small
cross sectional area to break the rock along cleavage plane.
 More numbers of shot holes are required in this case compared to other
pattern in the same cross sectional area.
 Since it’s depending on the direction of cleavage planes, not favor for large
excavations.
 The drag cut is particularly suitable in small sectional drifts where a pull
of up to 1 m is very useful

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 Fan cut
 The fan cut is one-half of a wedge cut and is applicable mainly where only
one machine is employed in a narrow drive. Generally the depth of pull
obtainable is limited to 1.5 m
 This is used in laminated strata, mostly soft and
covers the face with fan like pattern.
 Charge in each hole is heavy because each
shot has to act for itself.
 This cut is not recommended for hard ground.

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 Shaft sinking
 In mining, shafts form a system of vertically or inclined passageways, which are used
for transportation of ore, refill, personnel, equipment, air, electricity, ventilation etc.
 An important requirement in shaft sinking is to provide optimum fragmentation of
the rock so that it can be cleared quickly from the congested shaft-face area.
 Blasting operation is carried out against gravity, and the scatter of the broken rock is
confined in the shaft. It is common to use generous distribution of explosives
throughout the rock using a large number of small diameter (35 – 42 mm) shotholes.
 The number of holes N required for sinking a shaft of cross sectional area A in m2 is
given by: N = 2.5A + 22 or 0-234A+22 where A is in ft2
 The drilling patterns for shaft sinking are basically the same as those used in
tunneling but generally the cone cut is favoured.
 Another commonly used pattern, unique to shaft sinking, is the bench cut

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 Shaft sinking with cone or pyramid cut.

Full-face blasthole pattern for shaft sinking

A bench-cut blasthole for shaft sinking. Shaft sinking by benching.

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 shaft sinking
 The explosives used in shaft sinking must always be water resistant. Even if the ground is
dry, the flushing water from the drilling machines will always stay in the blastholes.
 Suitable explosives such as Emulex 150 or any suitable NG based explosives are easily
tamped to utilize the hole volume well.
 The powder factor in shaft sinking is rather high, ranging from 2.0 kg/m3 to 4.0 kg/m3.
 If charges are fired electrically, great care must be taken in wiring the circuit. Since more
than 100 detonators can be involved in each blast, they are connected either in parallel or
in series-parallel.
 It is therefore, important to ensure that the resistance of the circuit is properly balanced
and that no charged hole is omitted from the circuit.
 Due to higher risk of such errors in the generally unfavourable shaft sinking environment,
Nonel type detonators are increasingly preferred for initiation.
 wedge cut and pyramid cut are the most popular we use in shaft sinking.
 pyramid cut for circular shaft and wedge cut for rectangular shaft.

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 Excavation for production
 The excavation work for underground mines is usually divided into development
and production.
 The production work can be subdivided into two categories:
 short-hole and
 long-hole blasting
Short-hole blasting
 The diameter and length of
shotholes are usually limited to 43 mm
and 4 m respectively.
 Short-hole blasting is usually used
in breast stoping for narrow, tubular
ore bodies such as gold or platinum reefs
and in R&P..
Blasting arrangement in breast stoping
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 long hole blasting
 Basically there are three long hole blasting systems:
1. ring blasting,
2. bench blasting and
3. vertical crater retreat (VCR).
1, Ring blasting
 Ring blasting has wide application in massive ore bodies with their high rate of
extraction at low unit costs.
 The method requires three distinct operations
 The formation of a tunnel, called the ring drive, from a sublevel along the axis of the
proposed excavation.
 The excavation of an empty space, called the slot, at the end of the ring drive, to the
full width of the excavation.
 The drilling of sets of radial holes, called Rings, parallel to the slot at appropriate
spacing and burden.

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 cont..
 For stopping operation in metal mines, ring blasting is used.
 Vertical ring drilling, the holes are drilled in vertical plane like a fan to break to a
vertical face (sub level stopping).
 Horizontal, holes are fanned out radially to break to a horizontal face (shrinkage
stopping).
 Short delay interval of 25 millisecond is usually employed between holes in each
ring, starting from easiest breaking section in the middle towards the walls.
 In ring drilling, the distance between two consecutive rings is called the burden,
whereas the term spacing refers to the ends of the adjacent holes in the same ring,
measured at right angles to one, and straddling the outline of the ore block, using
construction lines (Figure b). Normally, the spacing/burden ratio is about 1.3, but it
can be as high as 1.5.
 When blasting into a confined slot, an allowance of at least 30% expansion from the
solid is recommended, in order to achieve good fragmentation. Also the stemming
length should not be more than two-thirds of blasthole length.

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B,Spacing constructions for ring blast design
C, Stemming length for ring
A, Operations in ring blasting blasting.
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 Bench blasting
 Bench blasting is essentially to surface excavation. A development
heading is first excavated at the top sublevel to provide drilling space.
Then depending on thickness of orebody and/or availability of drilling
machinery, either vertical or horizontal blastholes are drilled to increase
the height of the excavation

Bench blasting methods.

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 VCR
 Vertical or subvertical blastholes are drilled downward from the top level to
the bottom level. A cuboid of ore body can be
excavated from the lower level upward by a number of
horizontal slices using the same blastholes.
 Spherical charges should be placed to obtain the max
cratering effect. Gravity enlarges the crater dimensions.

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 Pillar Recovery
 In R&P mining, it is often possible to recover pillars, although the resulting large spans of
unsupported roof may be too dangerous to allow.
 often, cemented fill may be used to provide artificial pillars or cable bolting used to provide
roof support.
 As pillars are taken out, stress redistributions occur, making neighboring pillars potentially
unstable for drilling. As such, pillar scaling is required, and pillars should be drilled at
least two pillars away from any pillar-extracted area.
 Pillars are best drilled from the side furthest from extraction (i.e., from the side of supported
ground and least stress). Horizontal holes fired in rows parallel to the vertical sides of the
pillar provide the best fragmentation.
 The initiation sequence is most efficient from one side to the other. Remote-controlled
loading is the preferred method of removing the broken reserves.
 In mass blasting and pillar removal, holes may be required to be loaded for some
considerable time before they are blasted. It is, therefore, important that the explosive
selected will both perform after being loaded for the required time and be compatible with
the ore (some sulfide bodies are reactive, requiring special explosive).
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What?

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