ABSTRACT
A method of evaluating the fragmentation efficiency of rock mass blasting is presented based on the comparison of the block size distributions of the rock mass and the corresponding muck pile. The method involves the stochastic modelling of discontinuity in 3D space based on the statistical analysis of field discontinuity data. The aim is to estimate an in situ block size distribution which is compared to that of the muck pile. The latter is estimated from the application of image analysis techniques on randomly-taken photos. We present here some of the practical applications of the method in attaining more effective mine blasts.
