Rock Mechanics Rock Mechanics

and Rock Engineering 18, 17--36 (1985) and Rock Engineering

9 by Springer-Verlag 1985

Multiple B l a s t - H o l e Stresses and Measured Fragmentation

By
Charles H. Dowding
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, U. S. A.
and
Catherine T. Aimone
Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico, U. S. A.

Abstract
A wave superposition code was developed to calculate stresses explosivley induced
by long, multiple blast holes within a three dimensional rock mass. Computed
stresses were found to correlate with measured fragmentation from fourteen cases
in coal cyclotherm geology when actual, rather than planned, initiation times were
modelled.

Introduction
The complex and non-linear nature of blast fracturing as well as the
difficulties of precisely controlling blasts and defining efficient fragmentation
have restricted common blast design to empirical approaches. On the other
hand, advanced finite difference computer codes have been developed re-
cently to calculate fracture propagation from non linear interaction of initial
explosive transients and the following gas pressurization. Unfortunately, the
small time increment and computation cell requirements of the advanced
codes require uncommonly large computer memory capacities and have thus
far limited calculations to single blast holes. The code developed for this in-
vestigation avoids both empiricism and the large memory requirement in or-
der to include the first order effects of blast hole geometry, explosion timing
and the linear interaction of superimposed elastic stresses for three-dimen-
sional arrays of multiple blast holes.
While three dimensional superposition of stresses is not new, this code is
unique in several respects and most importantly, allows calculation of the
linear effects of wave addition from multiple blast-hole field cases. The unique
features include modelling long explosive columns as sequential detonations
of stacked, spherical changes with related inter- and intra-hole timing and
full wave form addition with distance-dependent attenuation relationships.
2 Rock Mechanics, Vol. 18/i
18 C.H. Dowding and C.T. Aimone:

The applicability of the code and these features was investigated by exer-
cising the code to compute 1) strain wave shapes for comparison with those
measured near detonations of both short and long columns of explosives,
2) stress distribution near single holes to investigate the effects of hole
length and separation of charges within one hole and 3) stress distribution
within blasted sedimentary rock masses for comparison with measured frag-
mentation from fourteen field cases.
The fourteen field cases were planned to measure the changes in frag-
mentation from modifications of full-scale production blasting in coal cyclo-
therm sedimentary geology in the Appalachian Mountains in the United
States. Overburden was removed with front end loaders which allowed
detailed photography of segments of the muck piles and the subsequent
counting of the large fragments on the photographs. Actual initiation times
of the delays were calculated from high speed movies of the blasts.

Computational Methods and Governing Equations

The three-dimensional, elastic wave propagation code computes principal
stresses produced by detonation of multiple, long, cylindrical charges. As
shown in Fig. 1, a finite number of time-delayed point sources within each

---,
I
I
T4

~sphericol
charge
T2
T~ (source)

M
N r 1 N sources {detonated at times TI...T4)
stress at node A = i=,X [Pi(t)Jj M spherical charges/source
j=t (M=4 in this case}

Fig. 1. Geometrical relationship of receiver nodes (A), and separately exploded charges,
(T1 to Ta), separated into spherical sources M (=4)

nearby borehole generate spherically expanding waves which are superim-

posed at receiving nodes. This three-dimensional approach is an extension
of the single borehole analysis given by S t a r f i e l d and P u g l i e s e (1968)
and F a v r e a u (1969).
The code is divided into three major steps. In the first step the significant
blast holes and thus point sources are determined for each node. A significant
hole for any node is closer than 7.6 m (25 ft), as waves summed from greater