A Study on the Vibration Frequency of Blasting Excavation in Highly Stressed Rock Masses

During blasting excavation in deep-buried tunnels and mines characterized by high in situ stress, the rock vibration is attributed not only to blast loading, but also to dynamic unloading caused by transient release of the in situ stress on excavation faces in the process of rock fragmentation by blasting. Understanding the vibration frequency characteristics under these two excitation sources is of important signification to determine appropriate vibration threshold limits for structure damage in deep-buried opening excavations. With a theoretical model developed for a deep-buried circular tunnel excavation by the millisecond delay blasting sequence, frequency characteristics and their influence factors are investigated and discussed for the vibrations induced by the blast loading, the dynamic unloading and the combined effects, respectively. The results show that the rising time of blast loading, the duration of dynamic unloading and the dimension of excavation boundaries are the main factors that affect the vibration frequency of blasting excavation in highly stressed rock masses. It is found that, the blast loading with a much shorter rising time accentuates higher vibration frequency than the dynamic unloading with a long duration, and it causes the blast loading vibration to be more readily attenuated as the propagation distance increases. Thus, the unloading vibration may become the main vibration component at far distances where its low-frequency vibration may exceed the vibration limits. The vibration induced by the combined effects has two distinctly dominant frequency bands corresponding to the two vibration excitation sources. The frequency analyses of the vibration records from two underground projects excavated by blasting are presented to demonstrate this finding. The findings of this study also clearly reveal that, reducing the dimension of excavation boundaries is one of the most effective means to prevent the vibrational damage to structures as it increases the vibration frequency and meanwhile reduces the peak particle velocity.