Modelling blast movement and muckpile formation with the position-based dynamics method

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the bench blasting, rock mass will be fragmented and thrown under the explosion energy. Usually, the movement of the rock fragmentation is of the same importance as the blast fragmentation. The muckpile shape is a manifestation and outcome of the rock fragmentation movement, which is not well interpreted yet. Most existing methods for the rock fragmentation movement are force-based, which are computer time-consuming. In this study, a position-based dynamics (PBD) method is extended to simulate the rock fragmentation movement in production blasting by describing rock mass displacement in a rigid-body dynamics framework. The proposed model discretises the whole rock mass volume into small irregularly shaped blocks using a Voronoi algorithm, and the velocity based on blast energy is assigned to each block. Then, the movement, collision and landing of the blocks are simulated with PBD method. A simulation example of a practical bench blasting case is carried out to validate the PBD method. The movement of the rock fragmentation to form the final muckpile is reproduced and analysed.