Rock blasting is the controlled use of explosives (or other methods such as gas pressure pyrotechnics or plasma processess) to excavate, break down or remove rock. It is practised most often in mining, quarrying and civil engineering such as dam or road construction. Except in mining, the result of rock blasting is often known as a rock cut.
The use of explosives in mining goes back to the year 1627, when gunpowder was first used in place of mechanical tools in the Hungarian (now Slovakian) town of Banská Štiavnica. The innovation spread quickly throughout Europe and the Americas.
Rock blasting currently utilizes many different varieties of Explosives with different compositions and performance properties. Higher velocity explosives are used for relatively hard rock in order to shatter and break the rock, while low velocity explosives are used in soft rocks to generate more gas pressure and a greater heaving effect. The most commonly used explosives in mining today are ANFO based blends due to lower cost than Dynamite.
In 1990, 2.1 million tonnes (2.32 million short tons) of commercial explosives were consumed in the USA, representing an estimated expenditure of 3.5 to 4 billion 1993 dollars on blasting. Australia had the highest explosives consumption that year at 500 million tonnes (551 million short tons), with Scandinavian countries another leader in rock blasting (Persson et al. 1994:1).