Mining Safety: Challenges and Prevention of Mine Disasters

Dear Colleagues,

Preventing mine disasters and improving mine safety performance are important issues for both scientists and enterprises.

The occurrence conditions of coal resources in underground coal mines are extremely complex. Common disasters in coal mines (coal and gas outbursts, gas explosions, roof falls, spontaneous combustion of coal, flood hazards, rock bursts, coal dust explosions, heat hazards, etc.) have emerged around the world. The risk of coal production still remains at a high level. In addition, with the increasing depth of coal mining, coal mechanical properties and the coal mining environment will change dramatically compared to that during shallow mining. The increasing geostress, gas pressure, and geothermal gradient lead to nonlinear characteristics of the coal and rock mass, showing rheological behaviors. Dynamic disasters will occur more easily and their mechanism will be more complex with the increased depth. Thus, the prevention and control of coal mine disasters become more difficult. Coal mine safety is facing new and more severe challenges.

This Special Issue will be devoted to exploring new perspectives on safety challenges and protective measures encountered in the current coal-mining process. It will focus on the hot issues, latest research results, and future directions of mine disaster prevention and control through numerical simulations, laboratory studies, field applications, and reviews, mainly in the areas of coal and gas outburst mechanisms, roof falls, spontaneous combustion of coal, and other dynamic hazards.

Prof. Dr. Jingyu Jiang
Prof. Dr. Wen Nie
Dr. Jia Lin
Dr. Wei Zhao
Guest Editors

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