Introduction
The increasing development of opencastmines due to the enhanced demand for minerals has led to the use of large amounts of explosives for blasting. Explosives are an efficient source of energy required for breakage and excavation of rocks. When an explosive detonates in a blast hole, instantaneously a huge amount of energy in forms of pressure and temperature is liberated. Only a small proportion of this total energy is utilized for actual breakage and displacement of rock mass and the rest of the energy is spent in undesirable side effects like ground vibrations, air blasts, noises, back breaks, etc. [1]. As the ground vibration is the most important environmental effect of blasting operation some regulations related to structural damages caused by ground vibration have been developed. The regulations are primarily based on the peak particle velocity (PPV) resulted from blasting operations. To come out with proper amounts of Maximum Charge per Delay which produces limited ground vibration, several empirical equations are available that can be found in the literature [2–۵]. These empirical equations are normally used for estimating PPV of ground vibration by blasting. In most research, distance and maximum charge per delay are considered as the main parameters in estimating of PPV. However, it should be noted here that the characteristic of ground vibration is different according to the location and sequence of each blasting and also depends on the propagation path of elastic wave. Rock mass and blasting themselves have their own uncertainties. The simulation of these effects is very difficult and researchers neglect these parameters. PPV is the function of distance and maximum charge per delay. According to Rai et al.
