Blast induced ground vibration limits on infrastructure

Blasting is often used in construction, quarrying and mining to fracture rock and overburden for extraction. While blasting is an efficient method for carrying out these tasks, there are often severe restrictions on the size of blasts and distance to surrounding structures and infrastructure. While there are regulatory limits on both ground vibration and air blast for buildings, there are no codified values and limited guidelines for infrastructure such as pipelines, transmission towers, power poles and electrical substations.The ground vibration limits for such facilities are normally set by the asset owners or operators and are typically based on historical practice rather than a rational process. Due to the uncertainty in these limits, the asset owners and operators tend to adopt extremely conservative restrictions. This paper is part of an ongoing research into the effect of blast vibrations on structures and lifelines which aims to develop rational processes for determining safe blasting limits. In particular, this paper reviews relevant vibration limits for electricity transmission and distribution (ETD) infrastructure and draws comparisons with observed behaviour of these infrastructure under earthquake loading.