Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Blast-Induced Vibration for Short-Delay Cut Blasting in Underground Mining

It is essential to control the damage to the surrounding rock and engineering structures in the process of cut blasting with a single free surface in underground mining. To reduce vibration induced by cut blasting, this paper proposes short-delay cut blasting, in which blast holes that are near each other are sequentially initiated with short-delay times. Experimental tests of cut blasting were conducted in a roadway in the Shaxi copper mine to compare the peak particle velocity (PPV) and frequency characteristics of simultaneous blasting and short-delay blasting. Numerical modelling was then developed to study the influence of short-delay times on blast vibration. The accuracy of the numerical simulation was verified by the comparison of the test and simulated data of single-hole blasting. The results show that the amplitude reduction ratio (ARR) value increases gradually with the increase in delay intervals, and the vibration reduction for delay intervals smaller than 6 ms is very limited, particularly in the near field. The principal frequencies (PFs) for short-delay blasting are similar to those for simultaneous blasting, which implies that the frequencies do not increase directly with the decrease of the delay intervals. The experimental tests also show that the mean frequencies (MFs) for the 8 ms delay are slightly higher than those for the 0 ms delay blast. In the case of ensuring the rock breaking of cut blasting, longer delay intervals of 8∼10 ms are beneficial to further reduce PPV in practical blasting.