Blast-induced ground vibration prediction using support vector machine

Ground vibrations induced by blasting are one of the fundamental problems in the mining industry and may cause severe damage to structures and plants nearby. Therefore, a vibration control study plays an important role in the minimization of environmental effects of blasting in mines. In this paper, an attempt has been made to predict the peak particle velocity using support vector machine (SVM) by taking into consideration of maximum charge per delay and distance between blast face to monitoring point. To investigate the suitability of this approach, the predictions by SVM have been compared with conventional vibration predictor equations. Coefficient of determination (CoD) and mean absolute error were taken as a performance measure.