Analysis and Design of Blasting Chains: A Computational Approach

This work presents a probabilistic methodology for the analysis and design of detonation sequences in non-electric blasting, considering both the statistical dispersion of pyrotechnic delays and the dependencies between detonation time intervals. These intervals are modeled as correlated multivariate normal random variables, allowing the estimation of blast success probability based on the simultaneous fulfillment of the desired firing order and the minimum time interval between consecutive detonations. The main contribution of this work is a general matrix formulation based on block matrices that provides a unified framework for representing and analyzing different non-electric initiation network configurations. The proposed formulation enables the direct computation of the mean vector and covariance matrix of detonation intervals from the statistical properties of connectors and detonators, while remaining readily scalable to complex layouts involving multiple rows and branching connection chains. Numerical examples demonstrate the strong influence of delay dispersion and network topology on blast reliability and illustrate the applicability of the proposed methodology to the probabilistic analysis and optimization of complex firing sequences.