Abstract
A new analytical formula for predicting ground vibrations induced by blasting is proposed. One factor accounts for geometrical spreading and one factor corresponds to inelastic attenuation. The geometrical spreading function is based on likely source geometries idealized as either square root, cube root, or site specific scaling and on the propagation characteristics of predominant wave types. The inelastic attenuation is approximated by an exponential function. The empirical constants in these functions are backcalculated from field measurements. Regression analyses were performed on 23 sets of measured data to determine the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method. In many cases, the proposed method gives better correlation than the conventional method. In most of the remaining cases, there was no difference between the two methods. The statistical analyses do not show much difference between square root, cube root, or site specific scalings.
