The use of underground reservoirs is a critical technique for achieving sustainable coal and water resources in many ecologically fragile mines in western China. Concrete samples subject to repeated water immersion and cyclic loading−unloading (CLU) operations were obtained from an underground artificial reservoir dam in Chahasu Colliery to study their strength damage and fracture propagation behavior. The variation in water content of the samples according to immersion times were divided into the rapid growth stage (0−10 h), slow growth stage (10−60 h), and stable stage (>60 h). With an increase in immersion times (IIT), the saturated water content of the coal samples logarithmically increased to 7.02%, and the ultrasonic wave velocity decreased by 10.44%. According to the increasing trend of plastic damage energy density, the total stress−strain curve was divided into four fracture stages. The total energy and elastic energy densities increased nonlinearly with the increase in cycles, whereas the plastic damage energy density first decreased and then increased. The plastic damage energy ratio at the stress peak point of the samples under different sequential times of immersion was 0.18, 0.29, 0.28, 0.58, and 0.61. The initial fracture development and fracture damage thresholds of the samples decreased by 20 and 50% with IIT, respectively. However, the proportion of the fracture closure and initial fracture development thresholds of the samples showed an increasing quadratic trend with IIT. Based on the low ratio of rise time to amplitude and high average frequency, the fracture mode of the samples under repeated water immersion was mainly tensile fracture. Acoustic emission events with energy higher than 10 4 aJ spread from the center with repeated water immersion. When the CLU was greater than 6, the plastic damage energy of the fitted three-dimensional surface increased nonlinearly with IIT. The energy parameter−plastic damage energy ratio was introduced to help develop a theoretical model for describing the complete stress−strain damage evolution of repeatedly immersed concrete samples under CLU. The paper provides technical references for improving the long-term strength design of concrete artificial dams of underground reservoirs.
Long-term erosion and repeated scouring of water significantly affect the technical properties of coals, which are the essential elements that must be considered in evaluating an underground reservoir coal column dam’s standing sustainability. In the paper, the coal pillar dam body of the 22 layers of coal in the Shangwan Coal Mine is studied (22 represents No. 2 coal seam), and the water content of this coal pillar dam body is simplified into two types of different water content and dry–wet cycle. Through acoustic emission detection technology and energy dissipation analysis method, the internal failure mechanism of coal water action is analyzed. This study revealed three findings. (1) The crest pressure, strain, and resilient modulus in the coal sample were inversely related to the water content along with the dry–wet cycle number, while the drying–wetting cycle process had a certain time effect on the failure to the sample. (2) As the moisture content and the dry–wet cycle times incremented, three features were shown: first, the breakage pattern is the mainly stretching fracture for the coal specimen; second, the number and absolute value of acoustic emission count peaks decrease; third, the RA-AF probability density plot (RA is the ratio of AE Risetime and Amplitude, and AF is the ratio of AE Count and Duration) corresponds more closely to the large-scale destruction characteristics for the coal samples. (3) A higher quantity of wet and dry cycles results in a smoother energy dissipation curve in the compacted and flexible phases of the crack, indicating that this energy is released earlier. The research results can be applied to the long-term sustainability assessment of the dams of coal columns for underground reservoirs and can also serve as valuable content to the excogitation of water-bearing coal column dams under similar engineering conditions.
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