Simulation of blasting induced rock motion using spherical element models
- Hibbitt, Karlsson and Sorensen, Providence, RI (USA)
Control of the rock motion associated with blasting can have significant economic benefits. For example, surface coal mining can be made more efficient if the overburden material can be cast further with explosives, leaving less work for mechanical equipment. The final muck pile shape in very type of surface and underground blasting is controlled by the blasting induced motion of the rock. A theoretically sound method of predicting rock motion will be beneficial to understanding the blasting process. Discrete element methods have been used for some time to predict rock motion resulting from blasting. What all of these approaches had in common was the use of polygonal elements with corners and sides as well as aspect ratio. Reasonably good results were obtained but treatment of the interactions of the corners and sides of elements was a computationally intensive process that made long simulations with many elements expensive to perform. The use of spherical elements showed increased efficiency but lacked the mechanisms for treating the bulking of the rock mass. The computer program developed was converted from an explicit code to an event-driven code and some bulking mechanisms were added that allowed spherical elements to exert a torque on other spherical elements with which contact was made. The architecture of this program and its event-driven nature made it difficult to vectorize for efficient execution on vector processing machines. A new code called DMC (Distinct Motion Code) has been developed this past year. DMC was designed and written especially to take advantage of super computer vector processing capabilities. This paper will discuss the use of DMC to perform accurate rock motion calculations with very reasonable computation times. 9 refs., 7 figs., 3 tabs.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/DP
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 5721844
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-89-1125C; CONF-8910198--1; ON: DE89016527
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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