Evolution of secondary stress field during underground mining of thick ore bodies

Abstract

Emergence of a new biological species in the biosphere of the Earth -Homo Sapience -which evolves and lives off the natural balance of solar energy has initiated a new form of the biosphere developmentan anthropogenic crisis. Such crisis arose in all ages of civilization. The crises had different nature and always the same cause: the discordance between consumption level and structure and resource capacities of the planet. At the present-day stage of evolution, we again have to deal with the crisis of the geosphere. The modern anthroposphere disturbs or absorbs the geosphere (atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) at the scale which is globally comparable with the natural protection capability of the geosphere and even exceeds these capacities on the local level. Regarding the lithosphere as the key source of minerals and energy for the modern techno-scientific civilization, the crisis consists in the fact that health growth of population and, thus, expansion in consumption of mineral resources is assured by extensive development of subsoil use based on efficient but environmentally unsound mining technologies. It is possible to resolve this discrepancy through ecologization of the technology paradigm of the mineral sector development, which needs ecological identification of geomechanical processes running in the lithosphere in the zone of extraction of a commercial value substance from it. Methods and techniques