A detonation is a violent explosion related to high explosives in which the rate of heat release is great enough for the explosion to be propagated through the explosive as a steep shock front, the so-called detonation wave (Krehl, 2001).
It occurs when the flame velocity reaches supersonic speed above 600 m/s and generally in the 2000-2500 m/s range. Peak overpressures can be 20–100 times the initial pressure, with typical values of 20 bar (Sutton, 2015).
A detonation process, regardless of being one-, two-, or three-dimensional, always consists of a shock wave, a reaction zone, and a rarefaction wave (Kumar et al., 2019). It ensures effective fragmentation and muck pile displacement by optimising the energy transfer to the rock. A good detonation often results to good fragmentation but that depends on factors like mine condition, blast design and exolosive type.
Detonation generates extreme pressures that fragment surrounding materials, displace earth/rock, and create air blasts through rapid gas expansion. In confined spaces, shock reflections amplify these effects and may cause secondary combustion.
Reference
Krehl, P. (2001). CHAPTER 1—History of Shock Waves. In G. Ben-dor, O. Igra, & T. Elperin (Eds.), Handbook of Shock Waves (pp. 1–142). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012086430-0/50003-8
Kumar, S., Nehra, M., Kedia, D., Dilbaghi, N., Tankeshwar, K., & Kim, K.-H. (2019). Nanodiamonds: Emerging face of future nanotechnology. Carbon, 143, 678–699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2018.11.060
Sutton, I. (2015). Chapter 14—Consequence Analysis. In I. Sutton (Ed.), Process Risk and Reliability Management (Second Edition) (pp. 580–601). Gulf Professional Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-801653-4.00014-X
