Search Results (3)

With the increasing improvement of national ecological standards, the eco-environmental problems caused by super thick coal seam mining in western China are becoming more and more serious. The failure law of weak overburden stratum is an important factor affecting the safe mining of coal. The failure characteristics of weakly cemented overburden under high-intensity mining in the mining area of western China were studied. For this purpose, a case study was conducted in the 1101 working face of the Baituyao Coal Mine in Ürümqi County. Based on the analysis of geological conditions in the study area, we combined empirical calculations with engineering analogy, physical simulation, and numerical simulation to comprehensively analyze the characteristics of mining-induced overburden failure. The study showed that the overburden in the study area had several unfavorable engineering geological characteristics, including ease of softening in the presence of water. The Middle Jurassic Xishanyao Formation is a directly recharged aquifer with a weak water-retaining property. Overburden failure mainly occurred at the two ends of the open-off cut. During the mining process, vertical fissures and bed-separated fissures were periodically developed and closed, and the fissures were interconnected. The overburden was fractured, and the fractured zone showed a trapezoidal shape, tapering off from bottom to top. The heights of the caving zone and the water-conducting fracture zone were 25 and 280 m, respectively, in the 1101 working face of the Baituyao Coal Mine, and the ratio of fracturing to mining height was 14.0. Due to the weakly cemented overburden and the presence of the Neogene weak aquifer, the risk of water and sand bursts still exists in this working face under high-intensity mining. Our findings shed light on the safe mining and environmental protection of the ground surface in coal mine shafts in western China. Full article

A reliable numerical simulation method and large-scale in-situ test method for super-thick coal seams are very important to determine the failure range of mining floors, which is often the basis to protect Ordovician limestone water, an important drinking water source for people in North China. This paper takes Yushupo Coal Mine as an example; the explicit–implicit coupling simulation method and the corresponding double scalar elastic–plastic constitutive model were established to predict the failure depth of the floor numerically, and verified by the full section borehole stress–strain in-situ testing method. The results show that the explicit–implicit coupling numerical program and the double scalar elastoplastic constitutive model are suitable for predicting the floor failure depth under the condition of extra-thick coal seams. In this condition, the overburden moves violently, resulting in a loading–unloading–reloading process with large stress variation amplitude in the mining floor, which leads to serious rock failure compared with that of medium-thick coal seam conditions. In Yushupo 5105 working face, the floor failure starts to develop from 9.3–24.2 m ahead of the coal wall of working face, and the failure depth no longer increases after 35 m behind the coal wall, with the maximum failure depth of 28 m; the envelope line of the floor failure depth presents an inverted saddle distribution. The above research results lay a foundation for further protecting the Ordovician limestone water, and realizing green coal mining. Full article

The movements of overburden induced by mining a thick coal seam with a hard roof extend widely. The effects of breakages in the hard strata on the strata behaviors might vary with the overlying strata layers. For this reason, we applied a test method that integrated a borehole TV tester, borehole-based monitoring of strata movement, and monitoring of support resistance for an in situ investigation of a super-thick, 14–20 m coal seam mining in the Datong mining area in China. The results showed that the range of the overburden movement was significantly high, which could reach to more than 300 m. The key strata (KS) in the lower layer main roof were broken into a ‘cantilever beam and voussoir beam’ structure. This structure accounted for the ‘long duration and short duration’ strata behaviors in the working face. On the other hand, the hard KS in the upper layer broke into a ‘high layer structure’. The structural instability induced intensive and wide-ranging strata behaviors that lasted for a long time (two to three days). Support in the working face were over-pressured by large dynamic factors and were widely crushed, while the roadways were violently deformed. Hence, the structure of a thick coal seam with a hard roof after mining will form a ‘cantilever beam and voussoir beam and high layer structure’, which is unique to a large space stope. Full article