ABSTRACT
Blasting in the mining industry is being transformed, and can no longer be treated as an art form or a practice purely dependent upon experiences of individual miners. Examples of key drivers that have demanded consistent and more accurate blast results are initiatives to control pit wall damage to help mine steeper pit slope angles, to control damage to underground excavation boundaries during tunnel development and stope mining, and to reduce reinforcement requirements and minimise local instabilities and dilution. Through this process there have been attempts to model the explosive rock interaction problem both empirically and numerically (e.g. Blair & Minchinton 1997; Donze et al., 1997; Holmberg & Persson 1980).
