Study on Prediction of Ground Vibration in Consideration of Damping Effect by Fragment in the Rock Mass

In modern mining industry, rock blasting is one of the essential working for rock breakage in terms of economic and efficient aspects. Blast-induced ground vibration may give serious impacts on wide range of surrounding environment, so it has to be paid much attention in the blasting process. Peak Particle Velocity (PPV) is one of the most important parameters related with blast-induced ground vibration. The prediction of PPV is very important in order to design an appropriate blasting standard and minimize its environmental impacts. However, general prediction equations and/or methods have not been developed yet because they do not consider the impact of rock mass and geological conditions. Therefore, in this paper, indoor tests, field tests and numerical simulation were conducted for assessing the effect of fragment in the rock mass on propagation behavior of ground vibration. In order to enable versatile vibration prediction at different sites with different blasting and geological condition, we investigated the differences in vibration behaviors due to blasting design, and the difference in geological condition. The result of a series of tests suggested that fragments in the rock mass related with the damping behavior of the blast-induced ground vibrations and more accurate prediction of the ground vibration (PPV) could be performed by considering fragment condition in the rock mass.