Destress Blasting in Coal Mining – State-of-the-Art Review

Coal mine workings continue to face the challenges of coal bumps and rockbursts caused by high mining-induced stresses due to high overburden pressures associated with the extraction of brittle, low strength coal seams. Despite of the fact that destress blasting has been applied for almost a century, it is still not a popular choice. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of destress blasting in coal mining. Information such as geology, rock properties, mining conditions as well as blasting parameters such as blasthole layout, hole length, explosive loading etc. are presented. The paper discusses the main benefits of destress blasting and the evaluation of its effectiveness as a measure to overcome the challenges of high mining-induced stresses causing coal bumps and rockbursts.