Analysis of Blasting Vibrations Produced In a Gold Mine Using the Damage Prevention Abacus

- Ground vibrations due to blasting can cause damage to nearby structures. Damage prevention criteria have been developed to avoid this potential risk, demonstrating a limit value for the peak particle velocity (PPV) as a function of ground natural frequency and type of structure to protect. In addition, several empirical attenuation laws to estimate PPV and frequency as a function of distance and the amount of explosive used were also developed. These models can be used to predict, separately, PPV and frequency, obtaining the representative point in the damage prevention abacus of the designed blast and decide if a potential damage could exist or not. In a previous work, the authors have proposed a procedure to define not a point but an area representative of the risk in the abacus of damage criteria. The procedure was developed for blasting in limestone quarries working simultaneously with the PPV and frequency attenuation laws. The present work demonstrates that the method can be used for other types of limestone blasts. Thus, several blasting operations were monitored on limestone materials in an open-pit gold mine. Verifying the goodness of the new method proposed.