MEHRAN UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY, JAMSHORO.

DEPARTMENT OF MINING ENGINEERING

Subject: Principle of Explosives

Title:

Experiment: 1/1

To Study the Mechanism of Bench blasting

Introduction:
Bench blasting is the most common rock blasting activity. By definition, bench blasting is
blasting in a vertical or sub vertical hole or a row of holes towards a free vertical surface.
More than one row of holes can be blasted in the same round. A time delay in the
detonation between the rows creates new free surfaces for each row.
Theory:
The extension of surface mining and the evolution of the drilling equipment have made
bench blasting the most popular method of rock fragmentation with explosives. It has even
been introduced and adapted for some underground operations. The bench blasting for
surface mine operations is classified according to their purpose. Below, the most
common types are mentioned:
1. Conventional Bench blasting
2. Rip-rap blasting
3. Cast Blasting
4. Railway and highway construction blasting
5. Trench and ramp blasting
6. Ground leveling and foundation blasting
7. Pre blasting
.

Fig: Definition of Bench bastings terms

Another common classification for bench blasting is according to their blasthole diameters:
1. Small diameter blasting, from 65 to 165 mm.
2. Large diameter blasting, from 180 to 450 mm.
Blast managers should continue to evaluate blast performance to continually improve their
design and cost performance. Bench blast design includes the following parameters;
1. Hole diameter
2. Hole Depth
3. Burden calculations
4. Spacing calculations
5. Sub-drill calculations
6. Stemming calculations
7. Volume of blasted rock
8. Number of holes in blast
9. Minimum Bench height calculations
10. Load factor and charge weight calculations
11. Powder factor.
Mechanism of Blasting:
Rock breakage by explosives can be explained in three principle stages. In the first stage
the detonating explosive crushes the rock in the proximity of the hole-wall due to high
detonation pressure. In the second stage, compressive stress waves created by the blasting
propagate in all directions with a velocity equal to the sonic wave velocity of the rockmaterial.
When the compressive stress waves are reflected towards a free rock face, they return as
tensile stress waves. This causes tensile stresses in the rock that will fail if the energy in
the shock wave is large enough. The energy that is released from the detonating charge
along with the distance between the hole/row and the free face have to satisfy a defined
relation in order to generate the failure of the rock. (The tensile strength of the rock is
approx. 1/10 of its compressive strength).
In the third stage, the high pressure gas (approx. 1000 l/kg of explosives) from the
detonation penetrates the cracks that are the consequence of the failure in stage 2 and
widens them. The rock mass between the hole/row and the free face will then yield and
be thrown forward by the gas pressure.