Exploitation
R. Norouzi Masir; M. Ataei; A. Mottahedi
Abstract
The drilling and blasting method is the first choice for rock breakage in surface or underground mines due to its high flexibility against variations and low investment costs. However, any method has its own advantages and disadvantages. The flyrock phenomenon is one of the drilling and blasting disadvantages ...
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The drilling and blasting method is the first choice for rock breakage in surface or underground mines due to its high flexibility against variations and low investment costs. However, any method has its own advantages and disadvantages. The flyrock phenomenon is one of the drilling and blasting disadvantages that the mining engineers have always been faced with in the surface mine blasting operations. Flyrock may lead to fatality and destroy mine equipment and structures, and so its risk assessment is very essential. For a flyrock risk assessment, the causing events that lead to flyrock along with their probabilities and severities should be identified. For this aim, a combination of the fuzzy fault tree analysis and multi-criteria decision-making methods are used. Based on the results obtained, the relevant causing events of flyrock in surface mines can be categorized into three major groups: design error, human error, and natural error. Finally, using the obtained probabilities and severities for these three groups, the risk matrix is constructed. Based on the risk matrix, the risk numbers of flyrock occurrence due to the design errors, human errors, and natural influence are 12, 6, and 2, respectively. Hence, in order to minimize the flyrock risk, it is very vital for the engineers to select appropriate values for the design events of blasting pattern such as burden, spacing, delays, and hole diameter.
D. Mohammadi; R. Mikaeil; J. Abdollahei Sharif
Abstract
The blasting method is one of the most important operations in most open-pit mines that has a priority over the other mechanical excavation methods due to its cost-effectiveness and flexibility in operation. However, the blasting operation, especially in surface mines, imposes some environmental problems ...
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The blasting method is one of the most important operations in most open-pit mines that has a priority over the other mechanical excavation methods due to its cost-effectiveness and flexibility in operation. However, the blasting operation, especially in surface mines, imposes some environmental problems including the ground vibration as one of the most important ones. In this work, an evaluation system is provided to study and select the best blasting pattern in order to reduce the ground vibration as one of the hazards in using the blasting method. In this work, 45 blasting patterns used for the Sungun copper mine are studied and evaluated to help determine the most suitable and optimum blasting pattern for reducing the ground vibration. Additionally, due to the lack of certainty in the nature of ground and the analyses relating to this drilling system, in the first step, a combination of the imperialist competitive algorithm and k-means algorithm is used for clustering the measured data. In the second step, one of the multi-criteria decision-making methods, namely TOPSIS (Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution), is used for the final ranking. Finally, after evaluating and ranking the studied patterns, the blasting pattern No. 27 is selected. This pattern is used with the properties including a hole diameter of 16.5 cm, number of holes of 13, spacing of 4 m, burden of 3 m, and ammonium nitrate fuel oil of 1100 Kg as the most appropriate blasting pattern leading to the minimum ground vibration and reduction of damages to the environment and structures constructed around the mine.
