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Quarry blast acoustic wave (concussion)—response of structures and human annoyance

1975; Acoustical Society of America; Volume: 57; Issue: S1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1121/1.1995087

1520-9024

Ashton Taylor,

Rock Mechanics and Modeling

Quarry blasts were monitored during 1973–1974 at several locations in Southern Ontario to determine if the acoustic wave (concussion) was likely to be of significance from the points of view of structural damage and human annoyance. The monitoring instrumentation used included sonic boom microphone-carrier system and FM tape recorder. The characteristics of the blast wave, overpressure, spectrum, and duration were analyzed using a storage oscilloscope and real-time analyzer and were compared with the characteristics of sonic booms. The two phenomena were shown to be similar in spectral content to most energy in the infrasonic region; the overpressure at several thousand feet from a blast can be similar to that of a sonic boom, whereas the duration of the pressure perturbation is several times longer for a blast than for a sonic boom. It is concluded that damage and annoyance criteria developed from sonic boom research may reasonably be applied to quarry blasts. It was also found that in many instances the acoustic wave can be of greater significance than ground vibration induced by the same blast.