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Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 23e27

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Mining Science and Technology (China)


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mstc

Underground pressure characteristics analysis in back-gully mining of shallow


coal seam under a bedrock gully slope
Wang Xufeng a, *, Zhang Dongsheng a, b, Fan Gangwei a, Zhang Chengguo a
a
School of Mines, China University of Mining & Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Coal Resource and Mine Safety, China University of Mining & Technology, Xuzhou 221008, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We studied underground pressure and its mechanism during back-gully mining in a shallow coal seam
Received 21 April 2010 under a bedrock gully slope, by means of physical simulation, numerical modeling and eld monitoring. The
Accepted 15 June 2010 results show that the intensity of underground pressure is related to its relative position at the coalface. The
underground pressure is intensive and the support resistance reaches a maximum when the coalface is at
Keywords: the bottom of the gully, whereas the underground pressure is moderate and decreases gradually when the
Shallow coal seam
coalface passes the gully. The mechanism of these changes is analyzed when the slope rotated in a reversed
Gully slope
direction to the slope dip during back-gully mining and form an unstable, multilateral block hinged
Back-gully mining
Underground pressure
structure, due to slipping. The subsidence of multilateral blocks is considerable when the block fragmen-
tation is small, resulting in enormous changes in the underground pressure. With an increase in the mass of
the block body, the block displacement will be reduced in conjunction with an increased clamp effect by
both the unbroken rocks and broken rocks in the goaf, resulting in a decrease of the underground pressure.
Copyright 2011, China University of Mining & Technology. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction underground pressure and reveal its mechanism. The preliminary


studies have shown that the composition of gully slope material
The undulating surface topography features are the result of and the advancing direction of a coalface have a large effect on the
new characteristics of underground pressure during long-wall pressure at underground coalfaces. Hence, we introduce the
mining in shallow coal seams in northwestern China. Increasingly, advance of coalfaces under back-gullies as the main mining
more attention is paid to this phenomenon with its adverse effect method, based on the geological conditions of bedrock gullies.
on safety and efciency in coal production. Zhong, Zhang et al.,
Kang, Kang et al. and Wang et al. have pointed out the particular 2. Shape and material composition of bedrock gully slopes
phenomena of underground pressure and surface subsidence
during coal mining under mountains in western areas of China By bedrock gully slopes, we refer to slopes entirely composed of
[1e5]. In addition, we carried out a series of studies on the features weathered bedrock, or slopes covered with a thin unconsolidated layer
of gully slope activities and their classication for mining under under conditions which can be ignored for the entire slope (category ).
slopes in mining areas of western China with wide gullies [6e8]. Their shapes and characteristic material composition are shown in Fig.1.
These investigations have provided the technical support for As part of the Dongsheng coaleld, the Yitai coaleld is mostly
ground control, as well as enriching ground control theories of covered with material from the quaternary. A subject to the impact of
shallow coal seam mining in this area. However, special studies on water erosion, the region is full of criss-crossed gullies, with exposed
the characteristics of ground pressure during shallow coal mining bedrock and the variation in surface height is relatively large. Besides,
the under gully slopes are just at an initial stage and the achieve- the varied morphology of the overlying gully slopes is that of typical
ments of these studies have not yet been systemic or thorough. hilly erosion of a plateau. Within this mining area, bedrock gullies are
With the development of large-scale mining in western coalelds, mostly eroded slopes with dual-structured material composition.
mining practices under gully slopes will become more common. The upper part is a loess layer of different periods of the quaternary,
Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the characteristics of usually 2e3 m thick but may be as much as 10 m. The bedrock is
exposed in the lower part, where weathering is very serious. The
slope height ranges from 20 to 100 m, but is generally 50e60 m. The
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 15950672601. slope angle changes from 15 to 70 and is generally 20e45 . Ditches
E-mail address: wangxufeng@cumt.edu.cn (W. Xufeng). vary from 10 m to hundreds of meters in width.

1674-5264/$ e see front matter Copyright 2011, China University of Mining & Technology. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mstc.2010.12.002
24 W. Xufeng et al. / Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 23e27

is only one thick and hard rock in the bedrock which controls the
overburden movement and either lies in the lower part of the frac-
tured zone or in the caved zone.

3. Underground pressure characteristics analysis of


back-gully mining under bedrock gully slopes

3.1. Physical simulation of slope activities during back-gully mining


under bedrock gullies

3.1.1. Physical model


A physical model was established basing on the geology of the
Hayewusu gully at the Nalinmiao coalmine with dimensions
5 m  0.3 m  0.95 m. The major similarity coefcients are as
follows: geometric ratio al 100; bulk density ratio ag 1.67 and
intensity ratio aR al  ag 167. Sand is used as an aggregate
material and calcium carbonate together with gypsum as cement-
ing material. The corresponding material ratios of the various rocks
were determined basing on a comprehensive consideration of the
characteristics of rock deformation [9e11]. In order to improve on
the limitations of our plane stress model and reduce the test errors,
a transparent plexiglass was placed at the bottom of the model,
preventing excessive lateral deformation and fragmentary leakage.
In order to analyze the features of slope gully mining activities
under different conditions of slope angles without changing the
geological conditions, two physical models with slope angles of 20 ,
30 and 45 were established. Fig. 2 shows the model of a simulated
vertical gully, 73.5 m deep with a slope angle of 30 .

3.1.2. Slope activities


Fig. 1. Bedrock gully slope shape and features of material composition. The slope activities of the bedrock gully slopes with different slope
angles are shown in Fig. 3. As seen from this gure, in the process of the
coalface advancing, breaks appear in the immediate roof, the main
Given the combination of the appearance revealed during mining roof does not shed any broken layers, but forms tensile cracks against
operations and the experience of engineering projects in this coal- the direction of the slope. The cracks extend from the surface of the
eld, the geological conditions which affect underground mining are slope to the coalface. A block is cut by the cracks and slope rocks in the
summarized as follows. the coal seam is from 2 to 6 m thick with direction of the goaf and with the support of the action of the rock
dip angles of 1e3 and a simple coal geology; the bedrock is thin, mass forms a stable, a multilateral hinged structure. The ability of the
less than 50e60 m and the coal seam is less than 100 m deep; there block structure to pass the level of a multilateral force becomes

Fig. 2. Original model of the experiment.

Fig. 3. Features of mining-induced slope activity with different angles.


W. Xufeng et al. / Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 23e27 25

overburden rock collapse with a low angle, where the instability of


the block structure lags the coalface by a specic distance, as shown
in Fig. 3a. When the slope angle is increased to 30 , the multilateral
block appears to be in a more relatively obvious phenomenon of
leaning with a larger overburden collapse at a larger angle, as
shown in Fig. 3b. When the slope angle becomes 45 , the multi-
lateral block structure leans to the goaf, similar to the condition at
30 , as shown in Fig. 3c. The experiment indicates that, when the
slope angle is 30 , massive dumping occur once at every 40e45 m
on average. This interval is reduced to about 30 m when the slope
angle is increased to 45 . We conclude that the frequency of
massive dumping increases with the slope angle.

3.2. Underground pressure characteristics analysis during mining


under back-gully

3.2.1. Numerical simulation of the ground pressure


After mining, the support suffers a certain amount of pressure
caused by deformation and collapse due to the overburden. When the
pressure on the roof is greater than the support resistance, the
support appears to be reduced which, to some extent, reects roof
pressure. We used numerical calculation to simulate the character-
istics of ground pressure on a coalface under an advancing back-gully.
The reduction in support resistance is regarded as an indication
to analyze the changes in roof pressure as a function of different
slope angles.
The support unit in UDEC (Universal Distinct Element Code) was
used to simulate the support resistance at a coalface and process
the data. The established model of gully slope under an advancing
back-gully is shown in Fig. 4a [12e16]. The model is 290 m long
with a maximum overlying thickness of 95 m and a minimum
thickness of 21.5 m under the gully bottom. The simulated reduc-
tions of support under the same support resistance (7000 kN) given
different slope angles (10 , 15 , 20 , 25 ), are shown in Fig. 4b.
From the simulation results shown in Fig. 4b, the shrinkage of
support under the advancing back-gully is small prior to the
weighting of the coalface. However, it will increase tremendously
after the weighting of the coalface. During the advance of mining,
the shrinkage of support decreases slowly due to the increase of the
thickness of overlying strata. It can be seen that during the advance
movement of the back-gully, the multilateral block (Fig. 4c) formed
by the entire segment has a great impact on underground pressure.
The shrinkage of support reduces and stabilizes after the coalface
passes the slope segment.

3.2.2. Observation of the underground pressure


The #2602 mechanized coalface of the Yitai Coal Group is
a typical bedrock gully slope coalface, with a ground surface
elevation of 1228e1294 m, an inclination 180 m long and
a strike length of 735 m. An aeolian surface sand is largely found in
the lowland and mountain slopes, generally less than 5 m thick,
next to the bedrock. According to drilling of the nearby coalface and
the exposed coalface, the distance between the roof and the shal-
lowest part of the surface is about 35 m in the open-off cut. Given
our comparison and eld measurements, the surface slope gully
angle ranges from 8 to 25 under the advancing back-gully, with an
average angle of 20 . The type of coalface support is a ZY6800/14/
Fig. 4. Back-gully mining simulation results under bedrock slope. 31, which belong to 2-leg shield support, with a rated resistance
6800 kN, and a mining height between 1.4 and 3.1 m. The results of
our observations for the support resistance at the upper, middle
relatively small, and as a result, the structure is likely to fall in the face and lower parts during gully slope mining are shown in Fig. 5.
at the top of the unstable fulcrum. It can be seen from Fig. 5 that, the power of the support working
We found that, the features of slope activities vary with changes resistance changes considerably at the back-gully mining coalface and
in the slope angle. When the gully slope angle is 20 , a multilateral appears as a feature of the old adage middle part is large, both ends are
block seems to be in a relatively obscure phenomenon of a small small. The support resistance reaches its maximum at 6550 kN, i.e.,
26 W. Xufeng et al. / Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 23e27

Fig. 5. Characteristics of coalface support resistance.

96.3% of the rated resistance, at the middle part when mining is under
the downstream gully. Toward the end, the maximum support resis-
tance decreases when the face advances and the depth increases.

4. Underground pressure characteristics analysis during


bedrock gully slope mining

From this analysis we can see that, it is easy for mining-induced


slopes to form an unstable multilateral block hinged structure. The
coalface support resistance decreases gradually and then stabilizes,
while the distance between the gully and the coalface increases. In
order to analyze the effective mechanism of the multilateral block
hinged structure on the coalface strata, we built a special physical
Fig. 7. Characteristics of the multilateral block hinged structural movements.
simulation unit.

4.1. Establishment of multilateral block hinged structural model maximum height of 80 cm. Eleven monitoring points, consisting of
seven vertical displacement points near the surface of the seam l and
Given the results of our physical simulation and numerical anal- four horizontal displacement points, are established and numbered
ysis, a structural model of a long-wall mining under a bedrock gully sequentially. The total excavation length is 225 cm with each exca-
slope is presented in Fig. 6a. Fig. 6b shows a physical model to analyze vation unit 5 cm long and an excavation interval of 10 min.
the changes in multilateral block motions and articulated features.
The model is composed of seven different sized multilateral 4.2. Mechanism analysis of the underground pressure affected by
blocks, with a total length of 245 cm, a width of 20 cm and a the movement of multilateral block hinged structures

4.2.1. Characteristics of the multilateral block hinged structural


movements
From Fig. 7, it is seen that, the characteristics of the multilateral
block hinged structure motion change with the block fragmenta-
tion. When the fragmentation is small (e.g, block 4), the block is
rst dumped in the direction of the goaf by gravity, and then
together with the intact rock, slowly sinks under the support of the
goaf. And nally obtains a balance with the combined action of
unbroken rock, goaf stabilized rock, and the immediate roof with its
support. The structural characteristics are shown in Fig. 7a.
When the size of the block increases (e g, block 5), the space
between rocks becomes relatively small due to the compression of
rock blocks and the gradual lling of the gaps between rock blocks
by broken rocks. The intact subsidence of block 5 decreases with
the effect of increasing compression of the broken block and
unbroken rock masses.

4.2.2. Block displacement characteristics


The vertical and horizontal displacements of the blocks in the
working face advancing process are shown in Fig. 8a and b. Fig. 8a
shows that when the fragmentation is small, multilateral blocks
produce signicant subsidence, vertical and horizontal displace-
Fig. 6. Foundation of structural and multilateral block model under bedrock gully ments are large and the deformation of large blocks accelerates,
slope mining. leading to considerable pressure on the coalface. When the
W. Xufeng et al. / Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 23e27 27

block fragmentation is small. Along with increasing fragmen-


tation of the multilateral block, the clamping force generated
by the unbroken rock and the broken rock in the goaf will
increase and results in a decrease of the block displacement.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the nancial support for this work, provided by


the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51004101
and 50904063), the Science Foundation for Young Scholars of China
University of Mining & Technology (Nos. 2008A003 and 2009A001),
the Graduate Student Scientic Research Innovation in the Univer-
sity of Jiangsu Province (No. CX07B_149z). The Program for Intro-
duction of Talents of China University of Mining & Technology is also
gratefully acknowledged.

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