Abstract:
Flyrock remains a significant threat to the health and safety of mine employees and integrity of
infrastructure, as well as to the safety of the neighbouring communities and their property. This
investigation was motivated by the general lack of fundamental research and mathematically
quantifiable data in the literature regarding the relationship between blast design parameters and
their impact on flyrock. The focus was to develop a concept that can be used to mathematically
quantify the trajectory of flyrock resulting from a blast, which can be used for future research. The
ultimate goal for this technique, once it has been fully developed, is to:
➤ Enable mining operations to generate a database with accurate historical flyrock
measurements resulting from their blasting operations
➤ Allow research teams to conduct scientific investigations into flyrock and the impact of
various blast design parameters
➤ Generate point-cloud data to visualize blasts and flyrock in a virtual reality environment
for training and education purposes.
This paper summarizes a conceptual technique and preliminary fieldwork that was carried
out to determine the technique’s feasibility and motivate further development. The results show
conclusively that a modified photogrammetric technique is capable of capturing flyrock data for
further processing and analysis. The data acquisition procedure can, at this point, be used to meet
the first aim of the project, namely to gather a field database of historical flyrock generation. Further
development of the technique is ongoing and it is envisioned that the scientific-based technique
will provide a method whereby future flyrock studies will be comparable and that assumptions will
be limited.
