For sustainable utilization of limited coal resources, it is important to increase the coal recovery rate and reduce mine accidents, especially those occurring in the entry (gateroad). Entry stabilities are vital for ventilation, transportation and other essential services in underground coal mining. In the present study, a finite difference model was built to investigate stress evolutions around the entry, and true triaxial tests were carried out at the laboratory to explore entry wall stabilities under different mining conditions. The modeling and experimental results indicated that a wide coal pillar was favorable for entry stabilities, but oversize pillars caused a serious waste of coal resources. As the width of the entry wall decreased, the integrated vertical stress, induced by two adjacent mining panels, coupled with each other and experienced an increase on the entry wall, which inevitably weakened the stability of the entry. Therefore, mining with coal pillars always involves a tradeoff between economy and safety. To address this problem, an innovative non-pillar mining technique by optimizing the entry surrounding structures was proposed. Numerical simulation showed that the deformation of the entry roof decreased by approximately 66% after adopting the new approach, compared with that using the conventional mining method. Field monitoring indicated that the stress condition of the entry was significantly improved and the average roof pressure decreased by appropriately 60.33% after adopting the new technique. This work provides an economical and effective approach to achieve sustainable exploitation of underground coal resources.

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Based on the “elastic modulus method” derived from the hypothesis of strain equivalence and test data of complete stress–strain curves of marble, granite, and sandstone under uniaxial compression, a damage model in the form of Logistic equation is proposed to simulate the stress–strain relation of rocks. This model can describe the complete deformation process of rocks under uniaxial compression satisfactorily. The used mathematical function is simple with just four model parameters, and each parameter has distinct physical meaning. The validity of the model is demonstrated by a mathematical deduction analysis and the model is further verified using laboratory test data. In addition, this model provides a method for estimating the elastic modulus of undamaged rocks using uniaxial compression test results and it presents a reasonable explanation of the chaos phenomenon occurred in uniaxial compression test.

The work aims to experimentally investigate the anisotropic fatigue characteristics of marble with different bedding orientations using uniaxial fatigue experiments and posttest computed tomography (CT) scanning. The impacts of interbed orientation on the strength, deformation, fatigue life, and stimulated fracture pattern were systematically analysed. Results show that the axial, lateral, and volumetric strain curves present a three-stage deformation and are influenced by the interbed orientation. The volumetric strain is maximum and minimum for a marble sample with 30 and 90 orientation, respectively, which is closely related to the failure mode. The crack pattern in the CT images is related to the interbed orientation; the crack density and scale are the largest for a 90 orientation sample and are the smallest for a 30 orientation sample. Good correlation has been established between the fatigue lifetime and the interbed orientation. It is suggested that anisotropic cyclic behaviours of marble is structurally dependent. K E Y W O R D Sanisotropy, ct scanning, cyclic load, failure mode, marble

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