ABSTRACT
The chemical energy released by blasting shatters and moves rock but also damages the remaining rock mass, affecting its strength properties. The notion of trying to limit blast-induced damage — which emerged in the middle of the last century, motivated by practical financial and safety reasons — has led to the development of controlled blasting techniques. A growing interest in this issue in recent decades has resulted in the emergence of several proposals for predicting the extent of blast-induced rock mass damage. From the engineering point of view, the most useful predictive models are theoretically grounded and supported by experimental results. Nonetheless, since the theories are rather simplistic and experimental data — despite the complexity of the topic — are scarce, modeling results tend to be crude. Despite their limitations, however, such models do assist engineers in their task of limiting blast-induced damage. This chapter reviews theoretical-empirical models of practical use for blasting operations.
