Internal Fractures After Blasting Confined Rock and Mortar Cylinders

Blast-induced fines in rock negatively influence multiple aspects of raw-mineral sustainability. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) sponsored a project to investigate the cause of the fines by studying blast fragmentation through small-scale blast tests and numerical simulations. The paper covers the experimental part of the project focusing on internal blast-induced fracturing and related mechanisms. The blast tests were done by blast-loading confined granite and mortar cylinders. The blast-driven dynamic cracking at the end face of the cylinder opposite to the initiation point was filmed with a high-speed camera. Following analyses covered internal crack patterns, fracture surfaces, and sieving of the blasted cylinders to quantify the amount of fine material created. The internal crack patterns and fracture surfaces were analysed by means of computer tomography (CT) and scanning-electron microscopy (SEM). The CT scans show that the amount of explosive charge affects the changing of the topological features of the crack patterns along the cylinder. They also depict different deformation zones around the blast-hole wall with respect to the blasted material and the amount of charge. Although fracture surfaces of larger fragments do not clearly differ in measured roughness and curvature, the SEM scans of smaller fragments show clear difference in fracture surfaces with respect to the blasted material and the amount of charge. SEM scans of thin sections extracted from the blasted cylinders show different fracture features that could be related to the branching/merging mechanism.