Full Wall Control

Blasting Optimization
By Benjamin Cebrian, Maria Rocha, Benjamin Morales,

Jose Luis Castañon, and John Floyd

Abstract
Wall control blasting is needed in most metal mining operations in terms of increasing
mineral reserves and assuring the safety of the operation.
This type of blasting has the goal to achieve a clean, stable rock wall in the shortest
distance from a well fragmented, easy to excavate, blasted rock mass. This can be done with
a variety of blasting techniques, all of which decrease the explosive energy towards the final
wall. Each technique needs to suit the geology: modified production blasting, buffer blasting,
pre-split and line drilling of empty holes. Pre-split is the most expensive technique, and allows
final steeper bench face angles while modified production blasting is the least expensive but
needs wider berms.
To be able to achieve a full wall control blasting optimization it is needed to develop
many studies and analysis to show and quantify the current behavior, paying attention to
details, implementation accuracy, geotechnical conditions, vibration restrictions and so on.
Experience shows that designs are not always well implemented, not only in the contour blast
itself, but also in surrounding production blast that can affect and induce blast damage in final
pit wall.
This article describes a practical example at a Mexican gold mine in two different pits,
with exactly the same drilling and explosives selection, changing other parameters (explosive
amount, air decks, pattern) but with extremely different results because of the geotechnical
conditions and restrictions.

6 The Journal of Explosives Engineering July/August 2018

 for the safety of the operation to achieve those in such an
aggressive main wall design.
Apart from failure of benches to stop rocks from falling
due to reduced capacity, a main fault dipping into the pit re-
sulted in a massive slide of a wedge. Blasting had to assess
then a far field as well as a near field vibration analysis.
Both pits, Guajes and El Limon, have a very heterogeneous
geology and structures, but they have in common a very hard,
massive and blocky rock, in which the changes of blast de-
sign are focused. The main difference between their geologies
is the structure: Guajes has low angle structures that makes
crest protection more difficult. El Limon has a structure paral-
Figure 1. Site location (courtesy of Torex Gold). lel to the pit and a low angle structure to take care to avoid
wedges creation.
Introduction
Mexico´s Media Luna Gold Mine consists of gold bearing Fundamentals of Wall Control Blasting
endo and exoskarns along with hornfels, limestones, dykes, Wall control blasts have the goal of achieving both a well-
some weathered material and a wide variety of faults. Some fragmented and displaced muckpile and, at the same time, an
of the ore is weathered rock but most of it consists of very undamaged wall in the shortest distance possible. It is much
hard (more than 200 MPa / 29007 psi of UCS) and massive more than simply firing a pre-split. Certain conditions must be
rock. On their two main pits, inter-ramp angles are 55º with taken into account in order to properly design a wall control
triple benches of 21 m / 69 ft height and 9 m / 29.5 ft catch blast. The following are a must:
berm width. • Geological assessment of both rock strength and geotech-
Final walls presented a lack of berm carry capacity due the nical conditions
general loss of crests and several locations where toes were • Hole diameters available (drill fleet)
not achieved. A wall optimization program was carried to • Explosives type (Anfo, emulsion blends, special wall control
prevent these two factors from happening, since it was critical mixes, packaged)

July/August 2018 The Journal of Explosives Engineering 7

Figure 2. Guajes (left) and Limon pits at Media Luna Mine.

Table 1. Main goals of wall control blasts when double and triple benching.

• Design has to focus on main goal of the blast: crest protec-

tion and/or toe achievement
• Number of rows: Max 4
• Free face critical for crest protection

When double or triple benching is the practice at the mine,

one has to understand that each one of the bench cuts (up-
per and lower) need a different approach, as the goal of the
contour blasts is different in each case. Table 1 reflects the
specific conditions on each case.
Mainly emulsion blends (70/30 and 80/20) should be used
even on dry holes when crest protection is a priority, as the
lower order of detonation and gas production of ANFO in-
creases confinement and thus possible back break. In lower
benches (mid or bottom bench) this is not as critical. Figure 3. Blast efficiency triangle has to be weighed towards low energy
Stiffness ratio of the bench (dividing bench height by levels and low confinement on wall control blasts (courtesy of Blast
burden) should be higher than two to benefit forward Dynamics).
displacement of the free face and therefore minimizing back energy level has to be low enough towards the wall to prevent
break. damage beyond the designed limit. Also, energy confinement
is key to protect the crest and not to open low angle geological
Wall Control Blast Designs structures (figure 3).
There are four main types of contour blasting, all depen-
dent both on the geology and the economy of the operation: Implementation Control
• Modified production blasting As with any blast improvement process, field supervision
• Buffer blasting of the implementation of the blasting design is key to ensure
• Pre-split full control of results and consistency to compare against fu-
• Line drilling ture refinements.
Apart from typical blasting process indicators, final rock
Each one of them can be applied to certain geologies, al- profiles have to be assessed in order to evaluate and refine
though there is a wide variety of cases where pre-split can how designs are performing. In general terms, there is no way
be applied but the economics of the operation do not justify to improve a blast design until four KPIs are under control:
using it. hole length, explosive linear density, collaring accuracy and
Out of the three keys for a normal blast efficiency, explosive stem length. Once acceptable levels of those are achieved by
8 The Journal of Explosives Engineering July/August 2018
Figure 4. Different geotechnical sectors require different wall control
designs. Fault, highly jointed rock masses need more buffer rows and
further distance from the wall, whereas harder, more massive rock masses
need just one buffer row and holes closer to the final limit.

Figure 6. The proper tool to refine wall control blasting is use scanned
profiles of final walls every 3 m. Average profiles show the performance of
blast designs and their implementation.

(figure 5) where it may be even necessary to offset the subdrill

not to damage the crest.
In wall control blasts, final benches have to be scanned to
obtain profiles every 3 m (10 ft) and piled up in an average
profile that reflects the performance of pre-split, buffer and
production rows.

Case Study – Media Luna Mine

Figure 5. Modified production blast: good, clean free face, four rows
maximum and the last row of holes is separated by long distances so no Study of Initial Situation
damage is induced to the final wall rock mass. Prior to developing the optimization process itself, a full
and complete analysis of both main pits, Guajes and El Limon,
both the mine personnel and the blasting contractor, proper was carried to evaluate current blasting procedures and their
evaluation of designs can be assessed. effects on pit slopes.
It is of vital importance that subdrill is controlled when The study comprises different stages: geotechnical
holes are falling on or nearby the final crests of lower benches details, blast modeling and analysis, KPIs identification and

July/August 2018 The Journal of Explosives Engineering 9

 Figure 7. Initial wall control blast design (left) and goals and position of design on triple bench. The same design was
applied to all types of geology with erratic results and not achieving the main goals intended.

Figure 8. Initial hole length deviation analysis at Media Luna Mine. With only 40% of holes in range, operational improvements were needed apart from
new blasting designs.

blast performance evaluation. Based on this study, many The 46% of holes longer than designed were developing
recommendations in terms of implementation accuracy and the main problem on Media Luna slopes because of the loss
blasting designs were proposed to improve contour blasting of crests. Damaged crests decrease the catching capacity of
and slopes. berms, so safety is compromised along the general areas of
Media Luna Mine.
Contour Blasting Practices at Media Luna Mine: Design On another hand, there was not any monitoring of re-
and Implementation sults implemented systematically at the mine: pre and post
Wall control blasting at Media Luna Mine had, all of them pictures, video, vibration monitoring, 3D laser scanning, etc.
and for every pit and geotechnical domain, the same configu- were not developed to control quantitatively the slope status
ration: hole diameter, pattern, explosive selection, and timing based on blasting.
sequence. During the study of the main design for contour blast at
Figure 7 shows the main configuration of Media Luna Media Luna, some important “wrong characteristics” were
Mine contour blast design. summarized:
In terms of implementation and focused on the four main • Same design used for every pit, geotechnical domain,
KPIs to have under control (hole length, explosive linear restrictions and level of the bench (upper, medium and
density, collaring accuracy and stem length), Media Luna bottom)
blasts showed deficient conditions, especially in hole length, • Implementation accuracy was not controlled
as shown in figure 8, being under the quality range of 80% • Energy level was not controlled based on conditions of
of accuracy. each pit/domain
• Result controls were not implemented

10 The Journal of Explosives Engineering July/August 2018

Figure 9. Details of Guajes Pit slopes: scanner real vs. designed pit, picture and section. Toes were generally not achieved, therefore losing catch berm
capacity.

Contour Blasting Effects in Guajes and El Limon Pit existing faults and the unstable structure that failed in 2016.
On another hand, figure 10 shows the initial status of El
The effects of this contour wall design are easy to check just
Limon Pit, where the average amount of crest damaged was
looking at the slopes of Media Luna pits. The main problem
around 1.6 m (63 inch) and the not achieved toe was around
in both pits was the crest damage caused by a poor design of
0.5 m (19.6 inch).
the blast, not avoiding the subdrill future crest and berms, and
With this background, new designs were proposed to
no accuracy in this implementation. The toe was generally not
achieve the designed slopes geometry: crest, slope angle, and
achieved as well.
toe.
Structures and restrictions are different between Guajes
Pit and El Limon Pit, and that is why customized designs and
implementation are paramount. New Designs for Wall Control Blast at Media Luna Mine
Figure 9 shows the initial status of Guajes Pit, where For new designs at Media Luna Mine, previous design,
the average of crest damaged was more than 2.0 m (78.7 implementation and control were taken into account to
inch) and the not achieved toe was around 0.5 m (19.6 inch). propose a new method. This new method involved:
Guajes has important vibration restrictions because of the

July/August 2018 The Journal of Explosives Engineering 11

Figure 10. Details of El Limon Pit slopes: scanner real vs. designed pit, picture, and section. Crest loss was the main issue at this pit.

Figure 11. Scheme of pattern and charge of each new design: upper (crest protection), medium (pre-split achievement) and bottom blast
(toe achievement).

Figure 12. Details of new status of El Limon Pit after new wall control blast design implementation. Crest loss (blue segment) has been reduced almost
completely (0.2 m - 0.4 m / 0.6 ft - 1.2 ft).

12 The Journal of Explosives Engineering July/August 2018

1. Design specifications for wall control blasting based on
restrictions, area geotechnical domain, etc.
Therefore, three new designs, for each level, were pro-
posed for hard massive and blocky rock located in some areas

Ready to Monitor...
of Guajes and El Limon Pit. Figure 11 shows the scheme of
pattern and charge of each design: upper, medium, and bot-
tom blast designs for wall control.
Main characteristics of new wall control blast designs:
• Decrease of energy and confinement of first buffer row in French
using air decks to avoid damage in crests.
• Decrease burden and spacing of first buffer row.
• Decrease the offset of first buffer row and eliminate the
offset of buffer row in bottom blast to achieve the toe.
• Increase timing to ensure relief.
• Bench preparation carefully developed to ensure appropri-
ate conditions (free face).
• Subdrill eliminated at bottom blasts to avoid damage in
future crest or berm of lower level.
• Limited number of rows to four or less to avoid over
confinement and ensure movement and appropriate energy
level, confinement and distribution.
2. Implementation Control (QA/QC) to ensure a quality
range of 80% accuracy on KPIs.
3. Monitoring results to be able to improve based on initial
status, changes, and final status.

Results of New Designs and Control

After the implementation of new designs at hard, massive
and blocky rock in both pits, Guajes and El Limon, results have
been significantly good. Much more notable in El Limon slope,
because of the faster rhythm of the operation, it is easy to
find improved slopes, where the crest is not damaged and the
designed toe is perfectly achieved. Presplit holes are shown in
the walls of El Limon, showing the better result of new buffer
designs in this kind of geology and structures.
Figure 12 shows the difference between the previous
slope (upper slope) where the damaged crest is shown with
the blue inclined line, and the new one, in the bottom, which
crest and toe are achieved as designed.
Damage in crest has decreased up to around 0.2 - 0.4 m
(7.8 - 15.7 inch).
At Guajes, the operation is slower and results are not that
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less crest damage have been achieved. Figure 13 shows the vibration and noise or air overpressure on
status of new slopes at Guajes pit.
Economically, in terms of implementation and results
one unit. Small enough to fit in your hand,
control, just only improving the hole length accuracy at 4%, Micromate provides a user friendly touch
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Conclusion and Future Work cornerstone attributes of Instantel® products.
Blasting optimization, control of implementation (QA/QC)
and energy controlled blasting proved to be a great technical Contact an Instantel representative today!
and economical approach for the mining operation at Me-
dia Luna Mine in terms of wall control. An improvement on
geometry and safety of their slopes has been achieved after
the implementation of customized wall control designs and a
complete protocol of good practices and performance moni- (613) 592-4642 · sales@instantel.com · www.instantel.com
toring on site.
(Continued on page 37.)

July/August 2018 The Journal of Explosives Engineering 13

Full Wall Control Blasting Optimization
(Continued from page 13.)

Figure 13. Details of new status of Guajes Pit after new wall control blast design implementation.

Drilling and blasting activities still need to be improved up Acknowledgements

to the main goal of a range of 80% accuracy on implementa-
tion KPIs. Mr. Victor Barua, Benjamin Morales and Jose Luis Castañón
The process of improvement and optimization of wall con- from TOREX-Media Luna Technical Services, should be
trol blasts continues at Media Luna Mine. The commitment acknowledged for making this study happen at the mine.
of all the staff involved in each stage is the key to achieve the Also, the operational team and geotechnical team at Media
best results, and this is the way the mine is right now. Luna for their kind assistance.
Blasting engineer expert Maria Rocha for her trust, pas-
sion, and commitment on this not-easy-to-perform job.

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July/August 2018 The Journal of Explosives Engineering 37