Continuous-discontinuous analysis of bench blasting in open-pit mining: Influences of hole packing and caving holes

Bench blasting is commonly used in open-pit mining. Some design parameters such as positions of hole packing and caving holes have great influences on the blasting effects. In this work, with a hybrid discrete-finite element method, numerical simulations of bench blasting are conducted, capturing the whole continuous-discontinuous processes. Considering two engineering cases, the influences of hole packing and caving holes are evaluated. The numerical results not only lead to some improved designs by relocating the packing positions and caving holes but also indicate the reliability of the adopted numerical tools.