Prediction of throw in bench blasting using neural networks: an approach

Tailoring the muckpile shape and its fragmentation to the requirements of the excavating equipment in surface mines can significantly improve the efficiency and savings through increased production, machine life and reduced maintenance. Considering the various blast parameters together to predict the throw is subtle and can lead to wrong conclusions. In this paper, a different approach was followed to combine the representational power of multilayer neural networks and various machine learning techniques to predict the throw of a bench blast using the data from a limestone mine located in central India. Then, using various analysis techniques, the training parameters have been adjusted to reduce the cross-validation error and increase the accuracy. Here, four different architectures of neural networks have been trained by different techniques, and the best model has been selected. The different machine learning techniques have been implemented on the basis of accuracy of the output. The sensitivity analysis has been done to get the relative importance of the variables in prediction of the output.