Sandvik iSURE Drilling Software Revolutionises Professional TunnellingOnly seamless interaction of drilled pattern, charged explosives and detonator delays can provide optimum excavation results in terms of round bottom and profile control, drilled metres, powder factor, pull-out rate, vibration control, tunnel advance and costs. Therefore, an overall approach for the tunnelling project is an absolute necessity when excavation quality is on focus.The iSURE (Sandvik Underground Rock Excavation) software takes underground excavation planning onto a totally new level. It supports high quality excavation and offers an efficient way of managing the process.The iSURE software tool for tunnelling and mining offers a project tree for combining all tunnel plans in one project. A tunnel plan, in turn, combines a curve table, tunnel profiles, drill plans, lasers and data collection files, all of which can also be controlled separately. Moreover, the software supplies two-by-two views for project, tunnel line, drill and blast design and reporting. One of the new advanced features in iSURE is that it uses explosive power and specific charging requirement of the different parts of the tunnel cross section, weight and power of explosive charges in holes as well as the depth of the fracture zones as the basis for the drilling and blasting pattern design. Additionally, the fracture zone can be visualised during the preparation of the pattern.A major strength in iSURE is that, as opposed to the traditional approach where the initial drilling surface is used, it utilises the level of hole ends - where the excavation is at its most demanding and where more energy is needed to break and loosen rock - for calculating the hole spacing and burden. This means optimised blasting as per plan which, in turn, leads to better pull-out, decreased need for scaling, increased loadability of rock and smoother collaring in the following round. In the drill pattern, iSURE offers a possibility to define a range of different hole types such as contour holes, field holes, grouting holes, etc. that will utilise their own parameters. In other words, the drilling result can be optimised as per the requirement: the contour holes need a more careful and longer collaring phase as well as lower drilling power, whereas more power can be used to drill field holes to decrease the round time. This makes the excavation process faster and more accurate.The iSURE software features editable plans. This greatly speeds up the planning process - which is iterative by nature - as the existing information can be utilised. When data on blasting characteristics in a certain rock type exist, they can easily be reused when designing other profiles. The need for re-planning is decreased and the planning process will be more efficient. All planning features will be included in the plan. Sandvik has developed the iSURE software in close cooperation with its customers. One of the main targets for the software development was to make finding optimum parameters for drilling and blasting easy. A key company in the process was Lemminkäinen.Sandvik's iSURE also offers the possibility to generate printable documents from the plans. They are valid official documents with the authorities and other interest groups. The iSURE software consists of three modules: iSURE Tunnel, iSURE Report and iSURE Analysis. The Tunnel module includes drill and blast design, drilling pattern design, longhole pattern, tunnel line and project files. The Report module supplies a round report for drilling management and process development, and the Analysis module offers measuring-while-drilling data collection and reporting for analysing rock structure and characteristics. This data can be exported into Microsoft Excel also. The Sandvik iSURE is primarily designed for use in the Sandvik i-series intelligent tunnelling jumbos but it can be also applied for drilling and blasting pattern design in other computerised Sandvik tunnelling and drifting jumbos. Visit www.sandvik.com or www.miningandconstruction.sandvik.com 42/08.