At many quarries for the extraction of building stone there is a problem of increased output of fines after all stages of crushing and grinding, which leads to a decrease in the economic performance of mining enterprises. The fine fraction is formed by the crushing / grinding of prefractured rock mass. Reducing the intensity and size of the prefracture zones will lead to a solution to the problem at hand. To determine the effect of explosive detonation properties on the degree of structural weakening of a rock mass, studies were conducted to measure the detonation velocity, stresses generated by a blast in the rock mass, as well as laboratory studies of microfracturing by X-ray computer microtomography. The size of the prefracture zones increases from 33 to 77 charge radii with increasing the detonation velocity from 2 to 5.2 km/s. The dependence of the number of microdefects (microfractures) generated by a blast on the velocity of explosive detonation takes the formof an exponent for the near zone and is linear for the distances far from the blast. According to the data of the experiments conducted at short distances (10R), the density of induced microfracturing N is within ≈5 thousand pcs/cm3, and with increasing the detonation velocity it increases to ≈13.8 thousand pcs/cm3. At medium (40R) and long (70R) distances, N increases from ≈750 to ≈2,400 pcs/cm3 and from 0 to ≈200 pcs/cm3, respectively. Using explosives with a reduced detonation velocity allows reducing the “surplus” impact on a rock mass and thus reducing the intensity of prefracture in the zone of controlled crushing during a blast. The study allowed obtaining quantitative parameters of the intensity and size of the prefracture zones, which compose the supplement to findings of historical studies on qualitative determination of prefracture.
