Investigation of a hydraulic impact: a technology in rock breaking

Finite element method and dimensional analysis have been applied in the present paper to study a hydraulic impact, which is used in a non-explosive rock breaking technology in mining industry. The impact process of a high speed piston on liquidwater, previously introduced in a borehole drilled in rock, is numerically simulated. The research is focused on the influence of all the parameters involved in the technology on the largest principal stress magnitude in the rock, which is considered as one of the key factors to break the rock. Our detailed parametric investigation reveals that the variation of the rock material properties, especially its density, has no significant influence on the largest principal stress, which implies a good adaptability of the method for different rock materials. The influences of the depth of the hole and the depth of the water column are also very small. On the other hand, increasing the initial kinetic energy of the piston can dramatically increase the largest principal stress and the best way to increase the initial kinetic energy of the piston is to increase its initial velocity. Results from the current dimensional analysis can be applied to optimize this non-explosive rock breaking technology.