Effects of quarry blasting towards the residential area at Kangkar Pulai

• Main Author: Ramanathan, Karthigeyan
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/81053/2/KarthigeyanAlRamanathanMSKA2019.pdf; http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/81053/; http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:125382

The drill and blast technique have been widely used recently due to demand for natural building materials such as rock aggregates namely granites. However, the intensity of blasting effects has been questioned on its validity towards the nearby affected residential areas. An attempt incorporating empirical methods established by previous researches to quantitatively asses these effects have delivered such a promising solution to this problem. By using these methods, the safety of the studied residential areas from blasting impacts can be compared and assessed with regards to the blast design parameters implemented in the quarries. In this study, the blasting effects from two quarries, known as Quarry A and B have been assessed based on the constant location of the residential areas namely Taman Pulai Hijauan (TPH) and Taman Bandar Baru Kangkar Pulai (TBBKP) respectively. The blasting effects are highly dependent on the maximum instantaneous charge in blast holes (Q) which are dependent on parameters like number of blast holes, charge per column, Powder Factor and number of blast per delay. A simple correlation was successfully established using the multiple regression analysis from the SPSS software. Besides that, assessments on blasting impacts are done such as ground vibration and air blast empirically where the final outputs of these assessments in terms of Peak Particle Velocity (PPV) and air blast (dBL) were evaluated based on the safety limits set by JMG and DOE. This study was able to show that with an increase of the independent variables, the Q value rises significantly. The average mean of Q from Quarry A (181.07 kg) was much higher than Quarry B (180.22 kg). The correlations made for each quarry showed that Quarry A had a better regression line with lower standard error due to the high number of blast data obtained during the monitoring period of about 1 year and 8 months. While, the impact assessments showed higher PPV value at higher Q holding blast holes in Quarry A where some of the blasts has exceeded the safe limit of DOE compared to Quarry B and decreases with increasing distance. The similar relationship was observed for the air blast assessments. Nevertheless, all of the blasts produced are relatively within safe limits which are less than 3 mm/s (DOE), less than 5 mm/s (JMG) and less than 125 dBL. Thus, extra precaution can be taken by estimating the suitable Q value such as A (97.66 kg) and B (271.68 – 495.01 kg) to maintain safe blasting operations and prevent damages to the nearby residential areas.