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Use of Blast Engineering Technology to Optimise Drilling and Blasting Outcomes at the Olympic Dam Underground Mine

Author:  W.R. Adamson, Technical Consultant, DynoConsult, Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific
              J.J. Bailey, Production Drill & Blast Engineer, Olympic Dam Operations, Western Mining Corporation

Abstract

The Olympic Dam copper-uranium underground mining complex is undergoing a major expansion programme which will see it continue to function as a world class operation at enhanced production levels.  One of the many technical challenges being met and solved is that of engineering the myriad aspects of the drilling and blasting unit operations in order to guarantee adequate supply of suitably fragmented ore under the changing conditions of demand from the downstream extraction processes.

Olympic Dam Operations (ODO), of Western Mining Corporation, currently mines Cu/U/Au ores from a number of stopes in a variety of geological/geotechnical ore types.  The variation in the insitu rock properties presented by each ore type signifies a need to develop drill and blast designs for a number of differing situations so as to correctly and opportunely adapt to changing energy needs in order to provide optimised blast outcomes.

Inadequate blast performance could result in expensive and difficult to rectify bottlenecks in the production cycle, which if widespread would pose a challenge to maintaining production targets.

ODC, in conjunction with explosive supplier, Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific, chose to implement a holistic blast engineering methodology incorporating extensive use of state of the art measurement techniques in order to:

  • Effectively characterise and Quality Assure explosive products used
  • Monitor the effective performance of blast designs via the use of blast vibration measurement techniques
  • Produce rock type specific blast designs using mechanistic vibration modelling techniques incorporating actual rock property data.

The objective of the implemented programme, the results of which are reported herein, is to apply a genuinely blast engineering based approach to the task of maintaining feed of fragmented ore to downstream process clients.
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