An improved proposal for assessing blasting-induced vibration verified by experimental studies

There is currently no unified method for analysing vibrations caused by shallow explosions, such as quarry and military blasting. Therefore, the authors developed an improved proposal to analyse blasting-induced vibration. The proposed methodology unifies earlier methods for assessing human exposure to anthropogenic vibration with those applied to analyse mine tremors and induced seismicity. The novel approach is based on experimental analyses of ground vibration induced by explosions conducted at the military training area. Present test results suggest that blasting-induced vibration is similar to mining-induced vibration in dominant frequencies and, simultaneously, to railway-induced vibration in the ratio of maximum acceleration to maximum velocity. Thus, combining methods applied to mining-induced vibration with those intended for railway-induced vibration yields satisfactory results for blasting-induced vibration, which exhibits characteristics of both railway vibrations (a max to v max ratio of approximately 250–350) and mining-induced vibrations (low dominant frequencies between 3 and 10 Hz). The proposed method may be of great practical importance for assessing blasting-induced vibrations, including evaluating human exposure to vibration in terms of perception-level contravention.