Fracture Development at Laminated Floor Layers Under Longwall Face in Deep Coal Mining

  • PDF / 1,988,503 Bytes
  • 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
  • 55 Downloads / 151 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


Original Paper

Fracture Development at Laminated Floor Layers Under Longwall Face in Deep Coal Mining Chunyuan Li,1 Jianping Zuo,1,4 Chunchen Wei,2 Xiang Xu,1 Ziqi Zhou,1 Yang Li,3 and Yong Zhang3 Received 31 January 2020; accepted 24 April 2020

The increment of stress level and fracture depth in deep longwall mining can cause groundwater inrush accidents frequently, and it is essential to study the characteristics of fracture development around laminated rock layers at the floor. This can help to understand the mechanism of groundwater inrush events and to reduce the potential risk. According to the rock mass stress–strain curve and the stress redistribution around the floor area in a deep longwall face, this study focused on the failure mechanisms in this area. A physical longwall model was established to study fracture development at the unloading zone around the floor area. The results showed that the plastic fracture at the floor was generated by high compressive stress around the floor and coal rib area after the breakage of main roof. The unloading starting point of stress changed nonlinearly, and the unloading stress increased nonlinearly. Therefore, the unloading fracture depth and the floor heave deformation can be much larger than those in shallow mining. In addition, the horizontal bedding plane can accelerate fracture development. When the unloading stresses increase, the branch fractures develop downward and connect the original joints and bedding planes at deeper floors. The dominant angle of main cracks varies in the range of 50–85, and the number of branch fractures can reduce when the dip angle of the main cracks increases (close to 85). In addition, the direction of main fractures was nearly vertical, and it was hard to connect them to the horizontal joints and bedding planes. KEY WORDS: Laminated floor layers, Fracture development, Unloading stress, Deep longwall mining.

INTRODUCTION As shallow coal resources become exhausted, the underground coal mining will inevitably move to 1

School of Mechanics and Civil Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China. 2 Faculty of Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. 3 Beijing Key Laboratory for Precise Mining of Intergrown Energy and Resources, China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China. 4 To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

deeper levels. However, the deep mining environment is characterized by high in situ stresses, groundwater pressure, abutment pressure, as well as severe dynamic failure phenomena (Xie et al. 2019). In terms of rock mass around excavations, after experiencing the peak stress concentration, there will be a dramatic unloading effect during the postfailure process, which can cause a wide range of deformations and dynamic failures. In this scenario, groundwater inrush can occur when the mine water becomes highly pressured and connected to the fracturing zone close