Blast vibration signal analysis using S-transform

Rock blasting in mines and quarries is an important operation meant for fragmenting and displacing the hard rock mass / strata. The unavoidable environmental effect is the ground vibration, resulting from the wastage of explosive energy. Ground vibrations travelling to far off distances may have effect on the structures. Signal processing techniques play a vital role in analyzing the velocity of ground vibration signals in rock blasting. So far, time-frequency domain is being used for analyzing the ground vibration signals. However, usage of S-Transform, we get frequency dependent resolution of time-frequency domain. It is possible to simultaneously analyze the signal using time, frequency and amplitude values obtained by applying S-transform. A case study is presented in this paper, wherein the S-Transform is applied to the ground vibration velocity signals, which helps in better understanding and analysis of the signal compared to Fourier transform and Wavelet transform techniques.