A new predictor for ground vibration prediction and its comparison with other predictors

In surface mining, explosives in huge quantity are being used for fragmenting the rock mass but only a part of the explosive energy is used in doing the useful work, the rest is spent in redundant phenomena such as groundvibrations, noises and air blasts. The elastic energy which is at a level less than the energy required to break the rock, gives rise to ground vibration. Airblast occurs when the gases produced during blasting escape to the atmosphere through existing weakness planes or rock displacement. Ground vibration and airblast both are matter of great concern as it causes damage to the existing surface structures and nuisance to the residents in the closer vicinity of the mine. It attracts more attention as the mines are approaching near exceedingly populated areas. A number of vibration predictors have been proposed which can be used to calculate the safe charge that can be initiated per delay, with minimum spoil to environmental. An attempt has been made to propose a new vibration predictor to calculate the safe charge per delay more precisely. Its results are compared with other predictors also. A program has been developed for analyzing the data from the field observations. A large number of blast data with wide variation in physico-mechanical properties were collected and analyzed to perceive the accuracy and applicability of the proposed predictor equation.