Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
College/Unit
Statler College of Engineering and Mining Resources
Department/Program/Center
Mining Engineering
Abstract
Coal bumps have long been a safety hazard in coal mines, and even after decades of research, the exact mechanics that cause coal bumps are still not well understood. Therefore, coal bumps are still difficult to predict and control. The LaModel program has a long history of being used to effectively analyze displace- ments and stresses in coal mines, and with the recent addition of energy release and local mine stiffness calculations, the LaModel program now has greatly increased capabilities for evaluating coal bump potential. This paper presents three recent case histories where coal stress, pillar safety factor, energy release rate and local mine stiffness calculations in LaModel were used to evaluate the pillar plan and cut sequencing that were associated with a number of bumps. The first case history is a longwall mine where a simple stress analysis was used to help determine the limiting depth for safely mining in bump-prone ground. The second case history is a room-and-pillar retreat mine where the LaModel anal- ysis is used to help optimize the pillar extraction sequencing in order to minimize the frequent pillar line bumps. The third case history is the Crandall Canyon mine where an initial bump and then a massive pillar collapse/bump which killed 6 miners is extensively back-analyzed. In these case histories, the cal- culation tools in LaModel are ultimately shown to be very effective for analyzing various aspects of the bump problem, and in the conclusions, a number of critical insights into the practical calculation of mine failure and stability developed as a result of this research are presented.
Digital Commons Citation
Heasley, Keith A. and Tulu, Ihsan Berk, "Using LaModel to analyze coal bumps" (2018). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 1440.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/1440
Source Citation
Heasley, K. A., & Tulu, I. B. (2018). Using LaModel to analyze coal bumps. International Journal of Mining Science and Technology, 28(5), 729–737. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2018.08.002
Comments
! 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).