Prediction of blast-induced flyrock using differential evolution algorithm

Flyrock is an undesirable phenomenon in blasting operations. Due to high potential to cause damage to machinery and nearby structures and to cause injuries, even fatal, to personnel, flyrock is the most dangerous adverse effect of blasting. For controlling and decreasing the effect of this phenomenon, it is necessary to predict it. Because of multiplicity of effective parameters and complexity of interactions among these parameters, empirical methods may not be fully appropriate for flyrock estimation. The scope of this study is to predict flyrock induced by blasting through a novel approach based on the combination of differential evaluation algorithm (DE) and dimensional analysis algorithm (DA). For this purpose, the parameters of 300 blasting operations were accurately recorded and flyrock distances were measured for each operation. In the next stage, two new empirical predictors were developed to predict flyrock distance. The results clearly showed the superiority of the proposed DE–DA model in comparison with the empirical approaches.