A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1989

An iterative method employing simulation technique was developed for optimization of the selection of equipment for hard rock full face drill and blast method of tunnelling. Specifications of equipment available in different categories were obtained through correspondence with the manufacturers. This information was stored with standardized formats in several databases. Formats were standardized based on their relevance in depicting equipment characteristics and requirements of the simulation program. A preliminary equipment selection program was developed to generate filtering conditions to access equipment databases. This program indicates dimensional ranges for equipment options fitting a particular tunnel size and method of operations adopted. Options generated by databases can be applied to the simulation program which provides total cycle time and individual activity times for a given tunnel segment. This program generates times for individual operations through random accession of appropriate probability distributions. Simulation is carried out with these generated time values. Statistical analysis of the total cycle time indicates the level of confidence with which it will lie within a specified time interval, which is kept as an indicator to optimize the selection of equipment. By changing equipment methods and advance per round iterations are used to arrive at the optimum tunnelling advance rate compatible with the system layout.