The mitigation of the vibration effects caused by tunnel blasts in urban areas: a case study in Istanbul

Ground vibrations generated by commercial explosives in tunnel construction may cause structural damage in urban areas. Therefore, suppressing the vibration effects and mitigating the possible hazard after blasting is important. We present a new method of controlled blasting that is environmentally friendly, and easy to utilize for tunnel construction. Small charges in this method are detonated sequentially to produce minimum side effects. The efficiency of the charges may be increased based on the previously monitored shots. This method is utilized in a tunnel construction in Istanbul with five experimental shots. In these experiments, the duration and also the quantity of explosives were carefully controlled. We were able to obtain better results with short durations (480 ms) instead of long durations (9,000 ms) although the vibration levels defined as peak particle velocity (PPV) became bigger while the quantity of the explosive charge increased from 3.088 to 9.264 kg.     

Timing effects on the fragmentation of small scale blocks of granodiorite

A series of small scale tests, simulating multi-hole blasts have been performed to establish the effect of delays on blast fragmentation. The blasts were performed in high quality granodiorite blocks, which were cut from stone prepared by dimensional stone quarry operations. The pattern used was equilateral triangular, with a distance of 10.2 cm between boreholes, which had a diameter of 11 mm, were loaded with detonating cord and the coupling medium was water. The delays used were achieved using different lengths of detonating cord for the cases of delays between 0 and 100 μs between holes and a sequential blasting machine firing seismic detonators for larger delays up to 4 ms. All fragments were collected and screened. The experiments showed that the worst fragmentation was achieved with simultaneous initiation of all charges. Fragmentation improved with the delay time between holes up to 1 ms between holes. If the experiments are scaled up, the results show that in granodiorite, fragmentation optimization requires delays of few milliseconds per metre of burden. The findings, agree with previously published work, involving larger scale experiments and other rock types.     

Controlled Fracture Growth by Blasting While Protecting Damages to Remaining Rock

Summary. Conventional blasting causes cracks and fractures in the rock. Controlled blasting techniques produce the macrocrack in a desired direction and eliminate microcrack in the remaining rock. Macrocrack development in desired direction is required for extraction of dimensional stone and at the same time there is need to reduce microcrack development in the block and remaining rock. To achieve the objectives, experimental work in the quarries was carried out for separating marble block from the in situ strata as practiced in some of the Indian mines by using detonating cord of 30 to 50 g/m by varying hole spacing, hole diameter, air cushioning, water and sand filled blast-holes. Blasthole notching was carried out. Further, tests were carried out by using various liners inside the blasthole to determine the damages in the extracted block and remaining rock. The designed experimental work was undertaken and rock samples were collected by coring before and after blasting for quantification of microcrack in the rock. P-wave velocity and microscopic studies were conducted for quantification of damages. Experiments were also conducted at laboratory scale for the quantification of damages in single circular and notched holes with variation of stemming and liners. The P-wave velocity close to hole always reduces after blast and in case of NG-based charge and detonating cord it decreases up to 1/3^rd. With PVC pipe and paper tube liners decrease is negligible. Thus, by using notched hole with paper tube, decrease in P-wave is minimum indicating least damage.     

爆破振动对建筑物影响测试要点

针对爆破振动对建筑物影响的测试方法、测试物理量选择、仪器性能要求、现场测试技术以及数据处理和分析要点等问题进行了较为系统的介绍，可供从事该项工作人员参考。     

Nutrients adsorption from seawater by new porous carrier made from zeolitized fly ash and slag

This study investigated the adsorption and precipitation of phosphate by blast furnace slag (BFS) separately.

In order to evaluate the adsorption capacity of BFS, BFS was treated before its use by acid. The authors aim to develop a new porous carrier to adsorb simultaneously ammonium and phosphate from seawater under eutrophic conditions. The current paper deals with a promising new approach to improve the utilization of some industrial solid wastes such as BFS and zeolite synthesized from fly ash [ZFA(Fe)] by their solidification to cylindrical porous carriers using a hydrothermal hot-pressing (HHP) method.

Attempts to produce porous carriers using an arranged HHP method with different porosities (24%, 40% and 52% (v/v)) were carried out. Physical properties of carriers such as porosity, compressive strength and height have been investigated. Laboratory studies showed strong evidence that the porous carrier was very selective towards phosphate and ammonium. The results demonstrated the role of porosity in enhancing phosphate and ammonium adsorption by the increase of the surface area per weight. The estimates of the parameters and the correlation coefficients according to the Freundlich equations revealed that adsorption was related to the porosity of carriers and phosphate and ammonium were adsorbed well on the carriers having large porosity.

The results suggested that developing carrier with high porosity was a promising way to enhance nutrients adsorption.     

Measurement of the Growth of Perturbations on Blast Waves in a Mixed Gas

We have performed a series of experiments examining the properties of high Mach number blast waves. Experiments were conducted on the Z-Beamlet laser at Sandia National Laboratories. We created blast waves in the laboratory by using ∼1000 J laser pulses to illuminate millimeter scale solid targets immersed in gas. Our experiments studied the validity of theories forwarded by Ryu and Vishniac (1987, 1991) and Vishniac (1983) to explain the dynamics of perturbations on astrophysical blast waves. These experiments consisted of a systematic scan of the decay rates of perturbations of known primary mode number induced on the surface of blast waves by means of a regularly spaced wire array. The amplitude of the induced perturbations relative to the radius of the blast wave was tracked and fit to a power law in time. Measurements were taken for a number of different mode numbers in a mixed gas consisting of 7.5 Torr xenon and 2.5 Torr nitrogen and the results are compared to theoretical predictions. It is found that two of the three mode numbers imply one polytropic index while the third case, which is the most complicated for several reasons, implies a higher polytropic index.     

Prediction of surface blast patterns in limestone quarries using artificial neural networks

This paper is an application of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in the prediction of the geometry of surface blast patterns in limestone quarries. The built model uses 11 input parameters which affect the design of the pattern. These parameters are: formation dip, blasthole diameter, blasthole inclination, bench height, initiation system, specific gravity of the rock, compressive and tensile strength, Young's modulus, specific energy of the explosive and the average resulting fragmentation size. Detailed data from a previous investigation were used to train and verify the network and predict burden and spacing of a blast. The built model was used to conduct parametric studies to show the effect of blasthole diameter and bench height on pattern geometry.     

Responses of roof and pillars of underground coal mines to vibration induced by adjacent open-pit blasting

Investigations were carried out at seven underground coal mines in India to characterise the responses of roof and pillars of underground workings to the vibrations induced by adjacent open-pit blasting. The roof rocks of the selected underground instrumented panels were having RMR between 36.7 to 57. Monitoring of strata behaviour was carried out before and after blasts. Arrangements were made to mount the transducers of seismographs in roof and pillars to monitor the vibration. Attempts were made to monitor the vibration simultaneously, for a blast, in the pillar and at the junction of the roof or away from the junction in the gallery. 102 sets of such vibration data were recorded in the underground mines. It was observed that the roof of underground roadways vibrated with higher peak particle velocity (PPV) compared to pillars. The amplification of vibration in the roof compared to pillars, away from the junction, was 1.02 to 2.58 times whereas at the junctions, it was 2.04 to 5.57 times.     

Correlations of blast damage to ground surface targets with explosion seismic effect

For an explosion resource, to evaluate its damage power to ground surface targets is an important problem. Two direct methods, measuring of air shock wave pressures generated by explosion and experimental observation of simulation target damage, are usually used to appraise this blast damage power. However, the measuring system of air shock wave pressures is not only very complex, but there are some problems to gauge the pressure sensors and the measured pressures often exhibit a strong scatter of data. In a simulation way, the used targets, easily damaged by explosion action, are not used once again so that there is the waste of materials. A measuring system of explosion seismic waves, with the characteristics being stable in operation and convenient to arrange the sensors of seismic waves, cannot be easily damaged in the process of experiment. If the explosion seismic strength is able to reflect the damage effects of explosion resources to ground surface targets, it is possible to suggest a new evaluation method based on the seismic effect, which, to large extent, will overcome the drawbacks of those two methods mentioned above. In this work, the potential of this new method is investigated experimentally. The experimental results show that under the identical ground-layer state and within a definite distance range, it is available to employ the explosion seismic effect to evaluate the damage power of explosion resources to ground surface targets.     

Colliding Blast Waves Driven by the Interaction of a Short-Pulse Laser with a Gas of Atomic Clusters

Collisions between shocks are commonly found in many astrophysical objects, however robust numerical models or laboratory analogues of these complex systems remain challenging to implement. We report on the development of scaled laboratory experiments which employ new techniques for launching and diagnosing colliding shocks and high Mach number blast waves, scalable to a limited subset of astrophysically-relevant regimes. Use of an extended medium of atomic clusters enables efficient (>80%) coupling of 700 fs, 1 J, 1054 nm laser pulses to a “cluster” gas with an average density of ≈10¹⁹ particles cm⁻³, producing an initial energy density >10⁵ J cm⁻³, equivalent to ≈5×10⁹ J/g. Multiple laser foci are used to tailor the spatial profile of energy deposition, or to launch pairs of counter-propagating cylindrical shocks which then collide. By probing the collision interferometrically at multiple view angles in 5^{^} increments and applying an inverse Radon transform to the resulting phase projections we have been able to tomographicall reconstruct the full three-dimensional, time-framed electron density profile of the system.