Seed Wave Modeling to Natural Caves Protection in Mining Operations

Gustavo Sampaio Lopes, Enaex Mining Technical Solutions

&
Adimir Fernando Rezende, BRANDT Meio Ambiente Ltda
&
Claudio Cesar Gajardo Arraño, Enaex Mining Technical Solutions
&
Eltton de Sousa Veras, Vale S.A
&
Luiz Felipe Mendonça de Amorim, Vale S.A
&
Manuel Villalobos Calderon, Enaex Mining Technical Solutions

Abstract

The restrictions imposed by the Brazilian environmental legislation regarding natural caves lead to a block
of substantial amount of mineral reserves. Mining activities can exploit caves surroundings, as long as the
company ensures that the activities will not cause any damage to them, requiring profound and time-
consuming studies. Since the use of explosives in the mine are potential sources of some damage to any
structures, it leads to a deep need for controlling the rock blasting activities. In this context, the maximum
charge per delay used in operations close to cave regions must follow some internal blasting assumptions
that have been developed during specific tests and mining activities. By the seed wave technique, it is
possible to determine the behavior of a seismic wave, which travels through a rock mass and it is generated
by blasting a known explosive charge. This technique has proved to be an effective tool because it is able
to accurately include the physical characteristics of the rock and different lithologies. This paper discusses
about modelling blasting induced vibrations in order to improve caves protection, which surround the
mining operations.
Introduction
The application of scientific concepts in the rock blasting operations allows the consideration of geological
parameters of the terrain where the shock wave propagates, as well as the blasting design with the
appropriate explosive charge per delay, timing and sequencing and drilling pattern. The blasting
operation´s success is related to how the explosives energy is released where the explosive and rock mass´
properties rules this interaction and their behavior. (CANEDO, 2013)

Besides, of a huge number of factors, which affects blasting results, delay detonators are one of the majors
between them. According to Mackenzie and Adamson (2011), damage to the surrounding rock mass,
downstream ore processing and induced vibration by blasting are some of the aspects, which are affected
directly by the delay time assigned to the blast holes. In this manner, the reduction of blasting induced
vibration is related not just to maximum charge per delay but also to the blast design (type of explosive,
number of decks, lithology, timing and sequencing).

In such context, electronic detonators have allowed a more controlled blast due to the increase of reliability
of assigned time and flexibility of chosen delay times. The scattering of firing time at electronic detonators
is around to 0.1 ms to 0.5 ms not being related to the assigned delay, which is, much less than pyrotechnical
detonators, that present a standard deviation of 2.5 to 10 percent of the average delay time. (Mackenzie
and Adamson, 2011).

Furthermore, blasting with electronic detonators has been achieved benefits, which were unreachable with
pyrotechnical initiation. Although, according to Mackenzie and Adamson, “there remain a technology gap
to assist site personnel in choosing the optimum timing to provide best results in terms of fragmentation,
damage, or environmental impact control”. (Mackenzie and Adamson, 2011)

Many issues occur every day regarding blast side effects in every mining operation through the world and
in Carajás iron ore mine – Vale S.A in the north of Brazil is not different. The new mining pushbacks have
occurred close to natural caves, which must be preserved. The restrictions imposed by the Brazilian
environmental legislation imposes a protection zones around the caves, leading to a deep need of
controlling rock blasting activities.

In this respect, seed wave modeling is a very useful assistant, which allows identifying the best timing
scenario and extracting the maximum advantage of wave interference phenomenon aiming to amplify or
mitigate the blasting induced vibrations. This type of modeling has two focus: maximize induced tension
by increasing constructive interference or lessen blasting induced vibration enhancing destructive
interference. Therefore, this modeling could assist to goals: either optimize fragmentation or minimize
damage to the surrounding, just adjusting parameters such as timing, sequencing and explosive type.
(Mackenzie, 2013)

Building the resultant wave is gathered by assuming that each blasted charge generates a similar shape of
vibration wave and the peak vibration is related to the amount of charge blasted. Another point to note is
the attenuation of this wave with the distance and at this manner, according to Blair (1999), Monte Carlo
methods can simulate very closely the real variability in shape and PPV. This adjustment takes into
account static attenuation´s models such as the one proposed by to Dowding (1985):
 Equation 1
𝐷 −𝑛
𝑃𝑃𝑉 = 𝐾 × ( )
√𝑊
Where:
• PPV: Peak Particle Velocity
• K: regression parameter
• W: Charge weight (kg)
• D: distance (m)
• n: regression parameter

The aim of this study is finding the best possible drilling & blasting configuration, timing and sequencing
in order to protect the natural caves, searching for the conciliation between mining operations and the
preservation of the speleological heritage. This paper discusses about modelling induced seismic
vibrations by using seed waves. The authors chose a particular region to conduct these modeling in respect
of a particular geology. This area was chosen due to its representatively and mining availability. Figure 1
shows the tests location at Mine N4E.

Figure 1. Iron ore pit of Mine N4E. It shows the location of the study area (green box) with cave
N4E-0026 (projected topography at the surface in yellow) and the protection buffer zones. The
green line is where the seed holes were drilled for the far field tests.

Site Characterization
The area where the operations occur presents a considerable lithological heterogeneity. Figure 2 shows
this diversity of lithologies acquired from Mine Sight software according to the surface lithological map.
In addition, table 1 shows the rock properties of the main occurrences at this region.
 Jaspelite Hematite friable Mafic Decomposed Mafic
Figure 2. Lithological map of N4E area

Table 1. Rock properties of N4E´s region

Rock Compact Hematite Friable Hematite Jaspilit
UCS - MPa 100 1 - 25 251
Young’s Modulus 129 28.76 92.08
(E) - GPa
Poisson Ration (v) 0.177 0.2-0.4 0.17-0.2
RQD / GSI Good Very poor Good

In the region of Carajás near the N4 and N5 mines, Vale has identified and studied several natural caves.
Most of the caves registries in the operational areas in Carajás cannot suffer any type of irreversible
impact, therefore further studies need to be carried out and implemented, as well as new vibration control
techniques and technologies.

Study Case
The ABNT/NBR 9653 is a Brazilian regulation regarding blasting issues to civil construction segment
defining Peak Particle Velocity (PPV) limits in relation to the frequency generated by detonations (figure
3), and it serves only as a basis for cave regions, and it has been used to evaluate the results of the
simulations performed of this study. Officially, there are no regulation for natural caves environment but
recently, an environmental agency published a set of technical recommendations that has been followed
by Vale (CECAV / ICMBio, 2016).
 60
50

PPV (mm/s)
40
30
20
10
0
1 10 100 1000
Frequency (Hz)

Figure 3. ABNT/NBR 9653 – Brazilian standard for blasting induced vibrations for civil
construction segment.
The blasting design commonly used at the mine is summarized at the table 2.

Table 2. Blast design commonly used at Carajás mine

Drilling diameter (mm) 146
Burden (m) 3
Spacing (m) 6
Bench height (m) 10
Hole depth (m) 11
Stemming length (m) 3
Subdrilling (m) 1
Type of explosive ANFO and Ibenite 70/30
Initiation system DaveyTronic
Inter hole time (ms) 7
Inter row time (ms) 75
Type of sequencing Line

Methodology
The aim of this work is minimize the blasting induced vibrations in these structures in order to increase
control over blasting induced vibrations where the caves are, and helping Carajás on its continuously
searching to improve knowledge of the appropriate relationship between PPV, frequency, and the rock
mass behavior.

In this purpose, two different tests were conducted in order to characterize completely the rock mass and
build a vibration attenuation and seed wave model. Initially, EMTS (Enaex Mining Technical Solutions)
personal conducted a field test to characterize how the blasting induced wave travels through the rock
mass. This study provides properly characterization of the wave, its attenuation and characteristics in far
field such as peak and wave shape regarding type of explosive and charge configuration. Furthermore,
this information allows characterize the wave interference phenomena, which could be extended to a
whole production blast.

Secondly, they conducted a near field study to determine characteristics without much interference from
the rock structures and measure important parameters such as P-wave velocity, wave shape and frequency.

These tests allowed characterize more precisely the rock mass ‘characteristics, which mainly influence
seismic propagation and build a representative vibration attenuation model.

Far Field Test

The study area is dominated by ferriferous rocks with ferruginous lateritic cover as well as cave N4E-
0026 and its surroundings, including other two smaller caves (N4E-0027 and N4E-0028). The authors
installed geophones next to each cave (outer top) and another one in its inner part. Subsequently, they
searched for propitious places to allocate two geophones closer to the seed holes so that signal with less
interference could be obtained. Figure 4 shows the arrangement of these seismographs, the geophones G1,
G2 and G3 installed in the ceilings of their respective caves and G4, G5 and G6 in the upper outer part of
each cave.

Figure 4. Field test and its arrangement. In red, signature holes and in white the installed
geophones
During the far field test, Vale´s drilling personal drilled twelve seed holes to blast them separately
generating the seed waves. The blast happened in sequence with a large delay between holes (800ms) so
the interaction between blasted charges was reduced. The charge pattern was representative of the types
of explosives, column patterns and diameters, commonly used in cave regions in the Carajás mines and
the intended configurations. The figure 5 shows the column patterns used during the tests.
 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 E1 E2
0

10
Stemming ANFO Blended Air Blended
12

Figure 5. Vertical profile of the signature holes used

Near Field
Drilling personal executed 14 holes spaced 4m from each other, with diameter 146mm (5 ¾ in), depths
ranging from 6 to 11m (19ft to 36ft), and grounded so they could all be the same depth (the geophones
were in the middle of the charge column) in order to conduct the near field test. In two of these holes (b10
and b 18), the author installed geophones (28 Hz) to record the vibrations generated by known explosive
charges. Figure 6 shows the test configuration as explained before.
b10- b18-
b4 b5 b6 b7 b8 b9 g1 g2 b19 b20 b21 b22 b23 b24
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
7.0
8.0

Série7 Stemming Ibenite 70/30 Cement Geophone Cement

Figure 6. Near field test configuration

The detonation sequencing of the test holes started from hole b24 to b19 and then from b4 to b9, all with
a 300ms delay between them.
For the measurement of the waves generated by the detonations of the holes, it was used a DataTrap and
two 28 Hz geophones.
Seed Wave Modeling
The field tests provided important information to characterize the rock mass in a more representative
manner. This allows the possibility of creating a model, which includes important factors such as the
interaction between waves always seeking to increase destructive interferences between them.

The modeling carried out considered the seed waves in far field captured from the holes P1, P2 and P3.
The other holes presented small cavities where was impossible to control the amount of charged explosive
and some holes were obstructed.

Moreover, the near field test provided important wave parameters such as P wave velocity of the rock
mass (1958 m/s – 6422 ft/sec), vibration peak generated by an explosive charge without much interference,
frequency and its shape. This was possible due to the test´s configuration, cross hole method.

Besides the use of the seed waves, the model uses the scaled distance law, proposed by Dowding (1985),
to take into account the wave attenuation with distance, as showed by equation 1. This regression was
done for each component of vibration pattern (longitudinal, transversal and vertical), using the waves
acquired by the Instantel´s seismographs and table 3 summarizes the values found in respect of each
explosive used.

Table 3. Constants of vibration attenuation law of each component and each explosive

trans vert long

Blended k 60,41 146,03 42,9
70/30 n 1,00 1,39 1,08
ANFO k 45,16 38,61 14,84
n 1,03 0,95 0,792
AIRDECK k 39,66 56,05 27,65
n 0,95 1,00 0,98

The rock´s properties gathered from Carajás mine´s database and the results from the far and near field
test has allowed simulating the behavior of the waves produced by a production blasting in this proposed
region, the N4E pit.

The simulations were ran varying the type of explosive (ANFO and Blended 70/30), charge profile (1
deck or 2 decks separated by 2m, 6.5ft, air deck), timing and sequencing (line, V, and parallel), the
initiation point (middle, right and left) and the size of the blasting (number of holes). All these
combinations resulted in 573,766,704 simulations. Table 4 summarizes theses parameters and the
variations range used in the simulations. The author used Paradigm – Recursive Theory to build this
model.

Table 4. Simulations parameters

Blasting´s size 100, 120 e 140 holes
Delay between holes (ms) 1-20
Delay between lines (ms) 60 a 130
Sequencing Line, V and Parallel
Initiation point Middle, left and right
Results
Several values were found in respect of combination in terms of PPV and frequency. From the findings,
detailed analysis of 100 blast simulations of each chose timing configuration, were ran applying a scatter
factor and its resultants PPV and frequencies were noted. This scatter factor is used due to geological
variability which means each wave generated by a blasthole is different due to geological particularities
(joints, faults, lithology), even if they are close to each other. These final simulations are the basis to
conclude about the best blasting design. The figures 7 and 8 shows all the results in terms of PPV gathered
from the simulations considering the actual practices with ANFO and blended 70/30.
100
90
80
70 NBR 9653
PPV (mm/s)

60
PPV X (mm/s)
50
PPV Y (mm/s)
40
PPV Z (mm/s)
30
20
10
0
1 10 100 1000
Frequency (Hz)

Figure 7. Actual timing and sequencing simulated in terms of NBR 9653 - ANFO and 100 holes
blast

100
90
80
70
PPV (mm/s)

60 NBR 9653
50 PPV X (mm/s)
40 PPV Y (mm/s)
30
PPV Z (mm/s)
20
10
0
1 10 100 1000
Frequency (Hz)

Figure 8. Actual timing and sequencing simulated in terms of NBR 9653 – blended 70/30 100 holes
It was sought the configuration that most satisfied the current norm NBR-9653. All the results presented
are for distances of 150m between the blasting and the caves. Regarding the findings of the figure 9 the
configuration which presented the lowest vibration peak would be the blasting of 120 holes, using air deck
and the sequence in parallel. The recommended timing and sequencing is a delay of 15ms between holes
and 90 ms delay between rows increasing progressively to 97 and 127 ms, every 5 rows. Figures 10 and
11 show the results obtained as a function of NBR 9653.

In view of the difficulties imposed by the conditions on the field (such as blastholes with water) it was
also searched for the analysis of an alternative configuration, which offered low peak values and water
resistance, such as the situation shown by blended 70/30, 140 holes and parallel sequencing. The best
timing scenario is 14 ms between holes and 81 ms between rows increasing progressively to 106 and 124
ms every 5 rows Figures 11 show the results obtained as a function of NBR 9653.
90 100 holes parallel

120 holes parallel

80
140 holes parallel

70 100 holes V

120 holes V
60
PPV (mm/s)

140 holes V
50 100 holes line - left

40 120 holes line - left

140 holes line - left

30
100 holes line - right

20 120 holes line - right

140 holes line - right

10
100 holes actual
0 120 holes actual
ANFO IBENITE 70/30 AIRDECK 140 holes actual

Figure 9. PPV comparative graph of all variations of the simulations

100
90
80
70
PPV (mm/s)

60 NBR 9653
50
PPV X (mm/s)
40
30 PPV Y (mm/s)
20 PPV Z (mm/s)
10
0
1 10 100 1000
Frequency (Hz)

Figure 10. Lowest PPV by timing and sequencing simulated in terms of NBR 9653 – AIRDECK
and 120 holes blast
 100
90
80
70
PPV (mm/s)
60 NBR 9653
50
PPV X (mm/s)
40
30 PPV Y (mm/s)
20 PPV Z (mm/s)
10
0
1 10 100 1000
Frequency (Hz)

Figure 11. Lowest PPV by timing and sequencing simulated in terms of NBR 9653 – blended 70/30
and 140 holes blast

Conclusions and Discussions

Changing controllable factors in the rock blasting operations (timing, sequencing, explosive type, charging
pattern and sequencing) could reduce significantly the current vibration peaks at the Carajás mine. A
reduction of up to 84% has been demonstrated via simulation, figure 9.

The simulated sizes of the blasting (100, 120 and 140 holes) does not seem to significantly change the
peak vibration values. Among the simulated sequencings, the one with the highest vibration peaks is V,
regardless the type of explosive and number of detonated holes. In opposition, the lowest peak is the one
with the parallel sequencing.

Blastholes, where it is possible to apply air bags, it is recommended to use as charge standard two decks
of explosives separated from each other by a 2m (6.56 ft) air deck as previously discussed. As a
sequencing, the parallel must be used with 15ms between holes and the delay between rows increasing
progressively of 90, 97 and 127 ms, every 5 rows, for, preferably, a 120-hole blasting. As an alternative
to the air deck design, it must perform a 140-hole blasting, loaded with blended 70/30 and parallel
sequencing with 14 ms between holes and time between rows increasing progressively from 81, 106 and
124 ms each 5 rows.

It is worth noticing that the results presented in this report are only representative for the N4E sector. It is
advisable to carry out a new seed wave modeling to determine the effect of blasts in other caves near the
mine.

Likewise, the trends and recommendations given are only valid when using electronic detonators system
that does not have significant delays scatter. This fact is due to the inherent dispersion of pyrotechnic
systems, which adds variability to the interaction of seismic waves causing loss of control over the blast
development.
Furthermore, In order to validate the findings of the model, blasts using the recommendations might
happen and compared with simulated results and historical results. This is fundamental to verify and
calibrate the results here exposed.

Finally, the study show a way to help the sustainable mine operations and the preservation of the
speleological heritage.

Acknowledgements
I am in indebted to my EMTS (Enaex Mining Technical Solutions) and Enaex colleagues, specially the
one who supported this project: William Adamson, Claudio Gajardo, José Silvio Corsini, Harold Mesa
and Rafael Serrão for the discussions and learning gathered through this project. Thank you very much
Paulo Henrique Costa, Fabio Roque and US Carajás for delivering all conditions in field to make this
study happening, not saving any energy to provide all required conditions and Vales S.A – Mina de
Carajás´ D&B team and Speleology team, for the opportunity of developing this technical study, specially
Marcelo Barbosa and Leandro Luzzi.

References
Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (2005) - ABNT NBR 9653:2005 – Guia para avaliação dos
efeitos provocados pelo uso de explosivos nas minerações em áreas urbanas.

Blair, D.P., (1999). Statistical models for ground vibration and air blast, Int. J. Blasting and Fragmentation,
Vol 3, pp335-364.

C. H. Dowding (1985), Blast Vibration Monitoring e Control, Prentice Hall Inc., 297 pp.

CANEDO, G.R. (2013). Mapa de iso-velocidades: uma ferramenta para o controle das vibrações nas
pedreiras. Tese (Doutorado)- Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo. Departamento de
Engenharia de Minas e de Petróleo. São Paulo, 161 p.

C.K. McKenzie & Adamson, W R. (2011) Exploring Optimized Delay Timing for Fragmentation. Explo
Conference, Melbourne. Australia

C.K Mckenzie. (2013). Limits Blast Design: Controlling Vibration, Gas Pressure & Fragmentation.
Queensland, Australia

ICMBio -Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade/ CECAV - Centro Nacional de

Pesquisa e Conservação de Cavernas. 2016. Sismografia Aplicada à Proteção do Patrimônio
Espeleológico: orientações básicas à realização de estudos ambientais / Marcos Pinho. [et al.]. – Brasília,
Brasil.