Selecting the Most Suitable Blasting Pattern Using AHP-TOPSIS Method: Sungun Copper Mine

Blasting is one of the most important operations in the mining projects. Implementation of improper blasting pattern may result in some undesirable phenomena such as poor fragmentation, back break, flyrock etc., which in turn increase the cost of operation. A pattern can be evaluated as suitable once it satisfies the objectives (including economical, technical and safety indexes) of the operation that are defined by the designer. In this way, selection of a blasting pattern from the field experienced patterns can be considered as a Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) problem. In this paper, blasting patterns of the Sungun copper mine are ranked using AHP-TOPSIS to find out the most suitable pattern covering the required level of the concerned attributes. As a result, the blasting pattern with burden of 3 m, spacing of 4 m and stemming of 3.2 m was determined as the most suitable blasting pattern.