Beyond Environmental Vibration Compliance

摘要

More and more,mining operations are required to increase focus on controlling environmental impacts and complying with stricter and stricter limits of acceptability as regards blast-induced vibrations and overpressure.The introduction and extensive use of electronic initiation enhances the ability of operations to comply with limits,though systems to permit optimisation are not readily or widely available,and are seldom used in any routine manner in the mining industry.Environmental vibration impacts,either in the medium-field as an impact on vibration-sensitive slopes or mine sectors,or in the medium to far-field as an impact on nearby occupied structures,can be minimised by careful selection of delay timing.While seed wave modelling provides a unique opportunity to identify optimum timing from a vibration control perspective,the method also provides the opportunity to go beyond compliance and start to address the complex issue of complaint and human perception-an opportunity which has received little attention.This paper presents the use of seed wave modelling as an everyday tool which is being used at the blaster level in the USA to identify delay timing which can be used either to minimise peak vibration levels,or to minimise the perception of vibration to humans occupying residential structures.The paper presents the methodology of the Seed Wave Model,how it is used to identify optimum delay timing,and how a Perception Index is defined and used to rank different delay timing options.The paper reproduces,in part,information presented by the same author (McKenzie,2012).