Came here to make this same comment. My father in-law has been in construction for 60 years, this is one of his favourite words. Neat to see it here on HN.
That is, using a sequence of explosive charges to improve soil compaction by breaking bonds and driving out latent water content. It triggers a cycle of liquefaction and then compaction afterwards.
http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S...