Rock mass properties are considered to play an important role for blastability. The geological characteristics that can directly influence on the rock factor, especially the rock parameters are physical and mechanical properties of intact rock and discontinuities. This research focused on analysing joints in two quarries and analyse with blasting design. In Quarry 1 it has been obtained two joint sets, and in Quarry 2 three joint sets have been determined. Moreover, roughness, openning, spacing and infilling characteristics have been determined in each bench in order to simulate different scenarios that better fit on the top size and amoung of fines.
Rock fragmentation size by blasting methods is one of the main operations in opencast mining, especially in quarries. Therefore, blasting operation is influenced by various factors, such as rock mass properties, blast design parameters and explosive properties. In recent years, a number of researchers have long been studied about the influence of rock mass properties on blasting blasting operations.
Kuznetsov (1973), Lilly (1986) and Cunningham (2005), consider rock mass properties as related to the nature of rock mass consist of physical and mechanical properties of rock and discontinuities. Discontinuity properties include orientation, spacing, persistence, opening, roughness and infilling materials created by a range of long-term geological processes. Several researches have been focusing on the influence of rock mass and intact rock properties on blasting operations, all of which clearly indicate that the properties of blasted rock mass has a significant impact on blasting results.
According to Lilly (1986) and Cunningham (2005), blast design parameters of bench blasting are the controlling parameters that regulate the desired fragmentation level of a particular blast. Rock mass properties and blasting parameters control the efficiency of a blasting operation.
This paper focused on the rock mass characterization and discontinuities properties in mining benches in two quarries (defined here as quarry 1 and quarry 2) and evaluate how joints can influence on the predicition of fragmentation.
