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

工业炸药，如以硝酸铵为基础的商业产品，在采矿和采石工业中广泛使用，以粉碎岩石，以便将其移除以接近目标矿物，或将含矿物的岩石打碎以进行加工。爆破过程的优化是最小化危害、环境破坏和成本的关键。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（井眼）直径、装药量/井眼深度、起爆系统、井眼布置和密度、起爆时间。设计对下游作业的成本有重大影响，例如，不必要的超大巨石的生产，这些巨石的磨矿成本很高，或者材料太细而不易处理，从岩石的爆炸地点到爆炸地点的运输，钻井成本和爆炸和岩石转移作业之间的时间。同时，在日益严格的立法下，尽量减少相关的危害和环境影响是至关重要的。一次失败的爆炸至少会使成本增加一倍，甚至导致煤矿关闭，损失数百万美元。因此，采矿部门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，爆炸过程以每秒数公里的速度发生，并产生数十亿帕斯卡的压力——正是这种巨大的力量在爆破操作中被用来粉碎岩石。然而，商业炸药的爆炸过程是“高度不理想的”，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，导致临界直径为几厘米或更大。这是炸药的尺寸，低于这个尺寸就不会爆炸——了解这个尺寸对于确保爆炸的完整性和安全都是至关重要的。这些炸药的非理想行为以及由此产生的爆炸速度与压力、钻孔直径、岩石类型及其运动和破碎之间的强烈反馈，使得该过程的预测极具挑战性，并且在EPSRC持续资助该研究领域的突破性研究之前，没有令人满意的方法存在。这在通过EP/F006004/01开发的问题的新颖“变分流线方法”中达到了高潮，该方法以任意精度解决了问题，同时在计算上非常便宜，允许进行非常大的参数研究。后续基金提案的目的是采用通过先前EPSRC项目开发的学术研究规范和技术，将其定量应用于商业炸药和岩石爆破，并生产一套商业非理想爆炸物理软件工具，可用于炸药制造和采矿业，以优化爆炸设计。

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.