Mining, tunnelling and borehole drilling for centuries

Ancient civilizations, in the monuments of the activities of past generations that have come down to us, have left us marvelous creations of human hands in stone. These are not only world-famous cult buildings, pyramids and temples, monks' cells cut into the rocks, statues of gods and rulers, ruins of ancient cities, but also galleries and tunnels for supplying settlements with water, quarries and mines where both building material and various ores were mined.

From 4000 to 3000 B.C. in Mesopotamia and Egypt, a variety of tools made of stone, then copper, and about 1200 B.C. of bronze were used in mines and quarries to extract stone and ores. In Austria, traces of iron ore mining have been found near Innsbruck in the 300th century B.C., and during the era of Roman rule, lead, zinc and silver were mined in this area.

Underground construction was widely developed in ancient Greece and Rome, where tunnels, wells, underground fortresses and temples were built. It is known that the Romans traveled a total of more than 300 km of tunnels to supply cities with water. Even in Egypt, which was mostly located on flat deserts, the builders were well acquainted with tunneling. Around 1000 B.C., iron began to flow from India and Persia to these states.

Among the ancient underground structures were truly grandiose even by modern standards. At the beginning of our era, in 41-51 AD, a tunnel with a length of 5.6 km and a cross-section of 2.7x5.8 m was dug off the sea coast of present-day Albania to supply the settlements with water. About 2 km of the tunnel passed through a strong lava rock. More than 30,000 people were employed in the tunneling.

There is practically no written evidence of stone work in antiquity. Historians usually refer to a major work on mining by the German Georg Bauer, who took the Latin pseudonym Agricola. His work was published in 1556, and the book, richly illustrated, was the only major manual on mining and underground construction for centuries.

Before the use of explosives and black powder in mining, the technology of rock destruction and ore mining remained almost unchanged. However, miners such as those of Tyrol, who had been mining for silver for several generations, dismantling the rock with kyles and wedges, had by 1872 sunk to 836 m below the surface. Kail and wedge work was extremely unproductive, especially in strong rock, varying from 0.01 to 0.05 m3/shift per person. When dismantling coal, the productivity was several orders of magnitude higher, from 0.8 to 2.4 m3/shift per person.

The use of gunpowder (1627) in mining led to revolutionary changes in the technology of rock destruction, and was a logical event against the background of achievements in science and technology of the XYI - XYII centuries.Scientific achievements in that period are associated with the names of Descartes (1596 - 1650), Torricelli (1608 - 1647), Boyle (1627 - 1691) and Marriott (1620 - 1684), Pascal (1623 - 1662), Newton (1643 - 1727). In the XYII and early XYIII centuries, hydropower and then steam plants were widely used. The first steam engine for pumping water from mines began to operate in 1705, and by 1770 more than 100 mine machines were in operation. By 1790, all of Newcomen's machines had been replaced by Watt's universal steam engines.

However, the spread of gunpowder work in underground mining was extremely slow. The first information about the widespread use of gunpowder for the destruction of rock dates back to 1632, in Clauston, on the Harz, then in 1643-44 in Saxony. In Sweden, however, gunpowder work became widespread only in 1824. Such a slow spread of gunpowder work was due to the high cost of not only explosive materials (VM), but also drill steel, which was required in large quantities when drilling boreholes. The construction of tunnels for various purposes, first water, then road tunnels and tunnels associated with hydraulic structures, had a significant impact on the improvement of drilling and blasting technology. In the 23th century, 1557 km of tunnels were covered in England in 1570 years (42 - 515). The so-called canal era of tunnel construction is well-known; Malpas 156 feet (1679 m) long tunnel in France, 1681 - 1803, The Tronquoy Tunnel (on St. Onentin Canal) in England, 45. Among these tunnels is The Hareeastle Tunnel, a mile and a half long (40.64 km) 36 by 2 feet (6.9 x 12.2 m) cross-section, built in 74-3, and the Mars des Canel Tunnel, 66 miles (1766.1777 km) long. The first railway tunnel in England with a length of 3,4 m was built in 8-1190, and in North America the first railway tunnel with a length of 1826.30 m was completed in 274.

It is impossible not to note the influence of the construction of subways on the improvement of drilling and blasting techniques. The beginning was laid by the launch of the London subway in 1863, the length of the lines of which was 3.6 km, since 1868 there has been a subway in New York, since 1896 - in Budapest, since 1898 - in Vienna. The Paris Metro was put into operation in 1900.

In the 140s, it was estimated that there were 3 tunnels in the world with a length of more than 12850 km. The most famous Alpine tunnels connecting France and Switzerland with Italy by railways are: Mont Cenis (1857 m, 1871-14984), S. Gotthard (1872 m, 1882 - 19780), Simplon (1896 m, 1906 - 2). In the XYII and XYIII centuries, the labor productivity during mining in hard rocks was within the range of 5 - 12 cm of penetration per person per shift, in less hard rock it is slightly higher - 0 cm with a cross-section of the workings of 7.1 by 5.0 m or 02.0 - 13.3 m2/shift per person. At the beginning of the 5th century, labor productivity increased to 1 - 2 m, or taking into account the increase in the cross-section of workings to 3 - 30 m36 per shift per person. By the second half of the century, it had increased to <> - <> m/person shift.

If after the use of black powder in mining for 250 years, the productivity of the driller practically remained almost unchanged, then after the use of perforators for 100 years it increased by 30-40 times. From the 80s to the 180s, the net rate of drilling in hard rock increased from 150 mph to <> mph.

In the history of the development of drilling and blasting technology and its component part of drilling holes and wells, it is possible to distinguish several periods. The period of manual borehole drilling, which lasted from the beginning of the use of black powder in mining to the invention of workable borehole drilling machines, to the second half of the 20th century, is characterized by a relatively constant productivity of drilling and blasting. In the second period, until the mid-<>s of the <>th century, there was a replacement of manual drilling with mechanical drilling, improvement of technology, a significant increase in the productivity of drilling holes by machines operating on the energy of compressed air, water, electricity. The third period, until the second half of the <>th century, was characterized by the intensification of borehole drilling, a multiple increase in drilling and driller productivity due to the improvement of the design of machines, the use of carbide for tools, the mass use of carriages, hydraulic installations with arrow-shaped manipulators. In the fourth period, in the second half of the <>th century, miners witnessed revolutionary transformations in rock drilling technology. Machines with a new principle of rock destruction under the working tool were used, the power-to-weight ratio and, accordingly, the parameters of the energy supplied to the machine changed by an order of magnitude. In the early eighties of the XX century, the long-standing dream of miners came true - full automation of the drilling process based on hydraulics and on-board computers on the carriage, the productivity of drilling and driller in hard rock increased to several hundred meters per hour of work.

The technology of drilling and blasting continues to develop, its history is being written in practice and, obviously, will be written for a long time and will have an active impact on the growth of productivity in tunnel construction in hard rock.