Empress Catherine II Saint-Petersburg Mining University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia

M. A. Marinin, Head of Blasting Department, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, marinin_ma@pers.spmi.ru

The critical objectives in the mining industry are the drill&blast design optimization and the explosion energy control at the required quality of rock fragmentation by blasting. Efficiency of a mine is directly connected with the quality of drilling and blasting which is the pioneer stage of mineral mining and influences productivity of all subsequent links in a mining process. The article presents the procedure and algorithm for the automated drill&blast design for the preset grain-size composition of broken rock mass in open pit mineral mining. The proposed approach allows calculating the main parameters of drilling and blasting. The input data are the strength properties and jointing of rock mass, the mining technology parameters and the characteristics of explosives. The automated design algorithm is based on the determination of fracturing zone in blasting of a cylindrical borehole charge. The diameter of this zone is assumed to be the burden; then, the drilling and blastingp arameters are selected until reaching a preset yield of average or weighted average fragments of broken rocks and (or) a certain percentage of the off-standard fraction yield by the Kuz–Ram model. The calculated parameters of fracturing zones and the predicted patterns of blasted rocks are presented in a graphical form. The described method can be used by mining engineers in development of standard and mass blast projects, as well as in training of students in mining engineering.

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