A proposed method for remote area mass quarrying
- Rock Mechanics, Pinawa, Manitoba (Canada)
- Explosive Technical Service Inc., Portland, OR (United States)
Current practice in establishing quarries in remote areas with hilly or mountainous terrain tends to the use of airtracs (or similar pioneering units) drilling horizontal holes to establish a face, followed by bench development with light excavating equipment. The authors propose the use of a hybrid coyote blast design that incorporates long-round tunneling techniques. This method would, in effect, use down-the-hole (DTH) drills to advance the drift cut to the final depth, allowing longer and more rapid drift advances, and replace the cross-cut drifts with clusters of DTH holes to achieve the same explosives distribution. In cases where back wall control is a concern, the cross-cut could be augmented or even completely replaced with fan rings of DTH holes. Further, in cases where highly uniform material is required, these fan rings could be distributed throughout the rock mass. The primary advantage to this approach is a significant reduction in capital equipment and the support systems required for developing relatively large volumes of quarry material. Although drill factors will be lower than with conventional practice, explosives consumption should remain much the same. A single compressor capable of running high pressure air to operate the DTH hammer would double, at lower pressure, as the driver for pusher leg drills. A simple jack-bar system could be used for the DTH set-up, or a more elaborate mount could be designed to be attached to the mucking equipment. It is anticipated that a three man crew could easily handle the entire operation.
- OSTI ID:
- 400814
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950247-; TRN: IM9650%%220
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 21. annual conference on explosives and blasting techniques, Nashville, TN (United States), 5-9 Feb 1995; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings of the twenty-first annual conference on explosives and blasting technique. Volume 1; PB: 371 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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