Development of a blasting simulator considering gas-rock interaction

Abstract

Optimization of rock blasting in mining engineering is essential for energy efficiency, cost reduction, and safety. In contrast, the dynamic rock fracture process due to blasting involves highly complex and rapid processes. Thus, it is crucial to develop a reasonable numerical simulator for blasting which can model the following processes: (i)detonation-induced shock wave and gas expansion, (ii)complex dynamic fracture process of rocks, (iii)gas-rock interaction including the impact of shock waves on the blasthole surface and the inflow of blast-induced gas into a dynamically evolving fracture network. Besides, massively parallel computation is indispensable to dealing with the computationally expensive coupling processes (i)~(iii). To this end, this study couples the cubic-interpolated pseudo particle (CIP) method, the combined finite-discrete element method (FDEM) and the immersed boundary method to model the processes (i)~(iii), respectively. A massively parallel computing scheme with general-purpose graphics-processing units (GPGPU) is incorporated for the parallel computation. The applicability of the developed simulator is investigated using a single hole blasting problem. Although further improvements must be achieved, the proposed blasting simulation results indicate that all the processes (i)~(iii) can be reasonably traced. In conclusion, the developed simulator is expected to help investigate the optimization of rock blasting.