Abstract
In urban and suburban areas, engineers are often faced with noise and vibration complaints, caused by rock blasting. In these cases the loose blasting technique is often used. In loose blasting, a small-scale charge is used to blast the rock mass into the fractured mass, which can be excavated by ripping and bulldozing equipment. In this study, it is shown through experiments that the overall economy of the excavation method using loose blasting is determined by the number of boulders produced in the process. Large boulders result in the loss of output of ripping, bulldozing and loading equipment. The rock fragmentation mechanism in loose blasting and the technique to reduce the number of boulders and discussed.
