Doctoral Dissertations

Keywords and Phrases

Assessing support requirement; Bonded Block Modeling; coal rib geomechanics; Depth of softening; Numerical modeling; Random Set Bonded Block Modeling

Abstract

"Coal mine rib failures are major safety and health challenge for coal mines worldwide. The need for clear procedures to evaluate mine rib behavior and to provide an efficient, reliable, and consistent rib control protocol is needed. Understanding coal rib geomechanics is essential for improving rib stability and eliminating fatality and injury trends due to rib failures. This knowledge is also vital to determine support requirements.

The rib control practices used in the 21st Century in most countries originated in roof control techniques. Understandably, applying roof control methods to coal rib does not yield desirable results. The geology of structures in the roof and rib relative to the face of the excavation differs. In this study, numerical modeling is employed to investigate mine rib behavior. Some scenarios were considered in the modeling process, including a non-cleated coal rib, a cleated rib, rib depth of cover, various rib support patterns, and the interaction between support and coal mass. The failure mechanisms and cleated and non cleated rib softening depths were analyzed in this study. The results established support requirements for ribs with depth. The evaluated support effect revealed that the shorter 1.2 m bolt length is sufficient to control rib stability at depths less than 250 m. Increasing bolts length for depths greater than 250 m was needed, but higher depths did not correlate with longer bolt support. This study also developed a coal rib support zone using the Random Set Bonded Block Modeling approach. The results demonstrated the capacity of the distinct element modeling based bonded block models suitability for use in investigating coal rib stability and support requirements"--Abstract, p. iii

Advisor(s)

Sherizadeh, Taghi

Committee Member(s)

Xu, Guang
Alagha, Lana Z.
Perry, Kyle A.
Emdadi, Arezoo
Mohamed, Khaled

Department(s)

Mining Engineering

Degree Name

Ph. D. in Mining Engineering

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Fall 2021

Pagination

xiv, 174 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes_bibliographical_references_(pages 154-173)

Rights

© 2021 Maurice Nuonituo Sunkpal, All Rights Reserved

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 12180

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