Blasting

The controlled use of explosives to fragment rock or other material in mining operations to make it amenable to excavation, loading, and crushing. Blasting is fundamental to hard rock mining of iron ore, gold, and diamond deposits, and is used in some bauxite operations for hard laterite or bedrock material. The blasting cycle involves drill pattern layout, charging with explosives, stemming, and detonation. Blast design, charge weight, and initiation sequence are engineered to achieve target fragmentation while controlling vibration, airblast, and flyrock.