Understanding of continuous damage and cracking process
of compressed
jointed coal is critical to predict its stability. Herein, for jointed
coal under uniaxial compression with bedding planes perpendicular
(sample A) and parallel (sample B) to the loading direction, an acoustic
emission (AE) monitoring device and a computed tomography (CT) scanner
were employed to study the damage and cracking process. Furthermore,
the correlations between the AE signals and internal fracture parameters
were analyzed. Results show that (1) shear and tension cracks are
respectively main damage forms in samples A and B; (2) there is a
drop valley of variations of AE count fractal dimension (D
1) over time before the stress peak, and compared with
sample B, the drop valley for sample A are much wider; (3) many fractures
between joint planes formed at yielding and postpeak stages, fracture
fractal dimensions (D
2) first increase
slightly with loading and then increase significantly at yielding
and postpeak stages; especially D
2 of
sample A is larger than that of sample B; (4) the accumulative value
of D
1 (AD
1) increases with D
2 monotonously, and
an expression of porosity or connectivity of the compressed jointed
coal was developed, by which the porosity and connectivity of jointed
coal could be calculated. The study outcomes could contribute to predict
coal stability and the variations of water and gas flowing channels
in seam in underground coal mines.