Simple ways to Incorporate Fragmentation analysis to your mine: Advantage in view

Introduction

It had been revealed by several Research works that good fragmentation in mining leads to improved ore recovery, reduced energy consumption, and enhanced efficiency in ore processing. This, in turn, lowers production costs by optimizing resource utilization and minimizing the need for additional crushing and grinding, ultimately contributing to higher overall profitability. The improvement of blast Fragmentation can be achieved using two key approaches:

1. Stress superposition approach,

2. shock wave collision approach.

The first approach involves allowing sequential Initiation within blast hole to support stress relief and wave inter influence within close blast holes. since during detonation, the wave front provides energy for fracturing through compression, shearing and tension, blast fracturing therefore depends more on superpose wave to develop more of tensile slab micro fractures. The second approach have to do with initiation timing, priming among others. The focus is to provide sequence of wave collision which at the end result in supersonic wave front, since the principle of wave collision states that, when two wave collides, the resulting wave has higher velocity than each colliding wave.

The achievement of all this within the rock block depends on:

1. Blast design

2. explosive type

3. Rock characteristics

4. Initiation system, among other factors.

Making balance demands that the previous blast Result is well understood, such that recommendation can be adopted from the output to aid subsequent blast design. The demand place necessity on Blast Fragmentation analysis. The use of available analysis empirical Formulas, tools and software had gained more ground through the development of WipFrag software by Wipware inc. The attached Flowsheet provide stages in blast image analysis.

Each stage is explained below:

1. Open WipFrag Software: Launch the WipFrag software on your computer.

2. Import Image: Load the image of the blasted material into the software by selecting the "Import" or "Open" option.

3. Calibrate Scale: Calibrate the scale of the image using a known reference distance. This ensures accurate size measurements.

4. Define Fragments: Use the software tools to manually or automatically define and mark the boundaries of individual fragments in the image.

5. Set Parameters: Adjust analysis parameters such as fragment size distribution, shape metrics, and other relevant settings based on your analysis requirements.

6. Run Analysis: Initiate the analysis process to generate statistical data on fragment sizes, shapes, and other characteristics.

7. Review Results: Examine the analysis results provided by the software, including histograms, size distribution graphs, and any other relevant output.

8. Generate Reports: generate reports summarizing the blasting image analysis results. This may include visual representations and numerical data.