The Gaojialiang Coal Mine in Inner Mongolia in China was used as an example to investigate the process of chain pillar and gateroad failure in the lower coal seam under the effect of an irregular residual coal pillar in the upper close‐distance coal seam. The results indicated that after the longwall face in the lower coal seam retreated through the area under the large irregular residual coal pillar in the upper coal seam, the bearing area of the residual coal pillar decreased and the roof pressure continuously concentrated in the elastic core area of the residual coal pillar. Isolated triangular slab rock was formed above the triangular residual coal pillar, and the weight of the overlying strata was transferred downward through the triangular slab rock. When the chain pillar under the residual coal pillar was destroyed due to loading that exceeded its carrying capacity, the upper triangular slab rock rotated and sank, which resulted in the intensification of the concentrated stress in the solid rib of the gateroad in the lower coal seam. Based on the analysis, it is suggested that in the design of a longwall system, a gateroad under an isolated residual coal pillar in the upper coal seam should be avoided when mining in close‐distance coal seams.
Mining of the coal seam adjacent to the extracted coal panel is widely practiced in China to improve coal resource recovery rates, but the energy change associated with longwall mining may present a new risk to ground stability and gateroad failure. To understand the energy change effectively, a meticulously validated numerical model, built using FLAC3D software, incorporating a double‐yield model for the gob materials and a strain‐softening model for the coal/rock masses, was developed to investigate the energy redistribution in coal seams and barrier pillars during the process of mining the coal seam adjacent to the extracted coal panel. The model results showed that the closer the region was to the LW 5301 gob, the higher the location and magnitude of the peak strain energy density. Consequently, the risk of rockburst in coal seams was greater than that in barrier pillars. Along the coal seam strike, with increasing advancing distance from the setup room, the magnitude of the peak strain energy density gradually increased to 1.88‐2.78 times the premining energy level. In addition, along the coal seam dip, the maximum distance from the peak strain energy density to the edge of the coal seam was approximately 16‐28 m, which is greater than that in the barrier pillar. The proposed numerical simulation procedure and calibrated method could be a viable alternative approach to evaluate longwall mining‐induced energy changes.
To investigate the effect of the pure coal/rock strength on the mechanical behavior, failure behavior, and energy evolution of coal-rock combined (CRC) specimens, an AG-X250 Shimadzu Precision Universal Test was used to conduct uniaxial compressive loading, uniaxial cyclic loading, and unloading compression experiments on pure coal, pure rock, and different CRC specimens. The results show that the uniaxial compressive strength, Young’s modulus, and peak strain of the CRC specimen mainly depend on the coal specimen instead of the rock strength. The major failure modes of CRC were the shearing fracture and axial splitting failure, and for the CRC specimen with the same hard rock, the CRC specimen severely failed due to axial splitting cracks. In addition, the released elastic energy Ue, dissipated energy Ud, and kinetic energy Ur increase with increasing rock mass/coal strength, and for CRC specimen with the same coal, the greater the difference in strength between the rock and coal is, the greater the kinetic energy is.
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