Application of computers in surface mine rock blasting-current and future perspectives

Abstract

The paper outlines the role of computers in designing and evaluating some crucial blasting design parameters and assessing their impact on rock fragmentation in surface mines. The paper demonstrates the effective use of computer based image analysis method and other indirect methods in characterizing the fragmentation in mass-scale blasting rounds. Various case-studies based on the experience of the author, while designing, implementing and evaluating numerous mass-scale blast rounds in surface mines have been suitably illustrated to draw the salient inferences on role of blasting design parameters on fragmentation vis-à-vis use of state-of-art computer techniques. The paper also enumerates the computer based state-of-art blast evaluation methods, gadgets and techniques. Furthermore, the current trends and important future concepts vis-à-vis rampant growth of computers in recent past have been described.