Underground coal mine ground control persists as a unique challenge in rock mass engineering. Fall of roof and rib continue to present a hazard to underground personnel. Stability of underground openings is a prerequisite for successful underground coal mine workings. An adaptation of a civil engineering design standard for analyzing the stability of underground excavations for mining geometries is given here. The ground response curve--developed over seventy years ago for assessing tunnel stability--has significant implications for the design of underground excavations, but has seen little use in complex mining applications.
The interaction between the small scale (pillar stress-strain) and the large scale (ground response curve) is studied. Further analysis between these two length scales is conducted to estimate the stress on pillars in a room-and-pillar coal mine. These studies are performed in FLAC3D by implementing a two-scale, two-step approach. This two-scale approach allows for the interaction between the small, pillar scale and the large, panel scale to be studied in a computationally efficient manner. / Ph. D.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/64986 |
Date | 28 March 2016 |
Creators | Fahrman, Benjamin Paul |
Contributors | Mining and Minerals Engineering, Westman, Erik C., Murphy, Michael M., Karfakis, Mario G., Ripepi, Nino S. |
Publisher | Virginia Tech |
Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Dissertation |
Format | ETD, application/pdf |
Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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