Predicting Detonation Characteristics and Performance of Commercial Explosives for the Mining and Explosive Manufacturing Industries

预测采矿和炸药制造行业商用炸药的爆炸特性和性能

• 批准号: EP/J013218/1
• 负责人: Gary Sharpe
• 金额: $ 13.09万
• 依托单位: University of Leeds
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FJ013218%2F1
• 关键词: Predicting; Detonation; Characteristics; Performance; Commercial

Industrial explosives, such as ammonium nitrate-based commercial products, are used extensively within the mining and quarrying industries to fragment rock to either allow its removal giving access to the target mineral or to break up mineral-bearing rock for processing. Optimization of the blasting process is key to minimizing hazard, environmental damage and costs. Factors affecting the outcome include choice of explosive (solid/liquid, formulation, additives, density), charge (borehole) diameter, charge loading/borehole depth, initiating system, borehole layout and density, detonation timings. The design significantly impacts on costs of downstream operations, e.g. unwanted production of oversize boulders which are costly to mill or material too fine to handle easily, the transport from the blast site of rock and to the site of explosive, drilling costs and time between blasts and rock transfer operations. At the same time, minimisation of the associated hazards and environmental impacts, under increasingly restrictive legislation, is paramount. A failed blast results in doubling of costs at the minimum to a mine closure representing a loss of millions of dollars. Hence there is a significant need and market in the mining sector for any method which can help to optimise blasting processes.In these commercial explosive, the detonation process occurs at speeds of kilometres per second and produces pressures of several gigaPascals - it is this enormous power which is harnessed to shatter rock in blasting operations. However, the detonation processes in commercial explosives is "highly non-ideal" in that the propagation of the wave is determined by the strong coupling between multi-dimensional effects and chemical kinetics, leading to very significant departures from "ideal" behaviour predicted by assuming instantaneous reaction. These explosives have reaction zones of several millimetres, resulting in critical diameters of several centimetres or more. This is the size of explosive below which it does not detonate - knowledge of this is vital to ensure both the integrity of the blast and for safety. The non-ideal behaviour of these explosives and the resulting very strong feedback between detonation speed and pressure, borehole diameter, the rock type and its movement and breakage, makes prediction of the process extremely challenging and no satisfactory method existed before the breakthrough research resulting from the sustained EPSRC funding for this research area. This has culminated in a novel "Variational Streamline Approach" to the problem developed via EP/F006004/01 which solves the problem to arbitrary accuracy while being extremely computationally cheap allowing very large parametric studies to be performed.The purpose of the Follow On Fund proposal is take to the academic research codes and techniques developed via the prior EPSRC project, apply them quantitaively to commercial explosives and rock blasting and produce a commercial suite of non-ideal detonation physics software tools which can be exploited by the explosive manufacturing and mining industries to optimise blast design.

工业炸药，如以硝酸铵为基础的商业产品，在采矿和采石业中被广泛用于粉碎岩石，以便将其移除以进入目标矿物，或粉碎含矿物的岩石进行加工。优化爆破工艺是将危险、环境破坏和成本降至最低的关键。影响结果的因素包括炸药的选择(固体/液体、配方、添加剂、密度)、装药(孔)直径、装药/孔深、起爆系统、孔布置和密度、爆炸时间。该设计对下游作业的成本有重大影响，例如产生不必要的超大巨石(研磨成本高或材料太细而不容易处理)、从岩石爆炸现场到爆炸现场的运输、钻井成本以及爆炸和岩石转移操作之间的时间间隔。与此同时，在日益严格的立法下，将相关的危险和环境影响降至最低是至关重要的。一次失败的爆炸至少会导致成本翻倍，导致矿井关闭，造成数百万美元的损失。因此，采矿行业对任何有助于优化爆破过程的方法都有很大的需求和市场。在这些商业炸药中，爆炸过程以每秒几公里的速度发生，并产生几十亿级的压力--正是这种巨大的力量被利用来在爆破作业中粉碎岩石。然而，商业炸药的爆轰过程是“高度非理想的”，因为波的传播是由多维效应和化学动力学之间的强耦合决定的，导致与假设瞬时反应所预测的“理想”行为有很大的偏离。这些炸药有几毫米的反应区，导致临界直径几厘米或更大。这是它不引爆的炸药的大小--了解这一点对于确保爆炸的完整性和安全至关重要。这些炸药的非理想行为，以及由此产生的爆速与压力、钻孔直径、岩石类型及其运动和破坏之间的非常强的反馈，使得对这一过程的预测极具挑战性，在EPSRC为这一研究领域提供持续资金而导致的突破性研究之前，没有令人满意的方法。这最终导致了通过EP/F006004/01开发的问题的一种新颖的“变分流线方法”，该方法解决了问题的任意精度，并且计算非常便宜，允许执行非常大的参数研究。后续基金提案的目的是将通过先前的EPSRC项目开发的学术研究代码和技术引入，将它们定量地应用于商业炸药和岩石爆破，并产生一套商业非理想爆轰物理软件工具，可供炸药制造和采矿行业用于优化爆炸设计。