Engineering Commons^™

Understanding The Connection Between Blasting And Highwall Stability, Robert Quentin Eades, Kyle A. Perry

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Surface mines continue to implement highwalls for several reasons, such as increasing recovery, improving margins, and justifying higher stripping ratios. Highwall stability is a complex issue that is dependent upon a variety of mining and geologic factors, and a safe design is necessary for a successful surface operation. To improve highwall stability, it is important to understand the connection between local geology and blasting. Explosives are employed throughout the mining industry for primary rock breakage. There are a number of controlled blasting techniques that can be implemented to improve highwall stability. These include line drilling, smooth wall blasting, trim blasting, …

Calibration Of Optical Digital Fragmentation Measuring Systems, Norbert H. Maerz, Wei Zhou

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Optical granulometry systems like WipFrag are required to measure fragments in situ. That is to say, the fragments are in piles where sorting takes place, where fragments are partially overlapped, and where fines may not be seen because they fall in and behind the coarser fragments, or where the fines are simply too small to be seen. As a result, optical systems tend typically to overestimate the size of the distribution, and underestimate the variability of the distribution. The wider the size distribution being measured, the more severe the problem is. This paper presents the results of a study that …

Optical Digital Fragmentation Measuring Systems -- Inherent Sources Of Error, Norbert H. Maerz, Wei Zhou

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Automated optical imaging systems of measuring fragmentation are increasingly being used in the mining, comminution, and materials handling industries. These methods have been well received in many of the industries involved. Considering that in many of these applications there are no alternative ways of sizing material, having even a rudimentary measurement of size distributions allows evaluations of explosive, blast design, detonator performance, crusher and milling performance, and material degradation due to transport.

Optical methods have inherent limitations, which reflect on accuracy, precision, and reproducibility of measurement results. This stems from the fact that there are myriads of variables, which affect …