The influence of coal and enclosing rock fracturing on the management of the rock massif during the exploitation of thick coal seams by the longwall top coal caving technology

Abstract

Abstract The methods for the disintegration of coal-bearing rock massif have been developed that allow eliminating the areal hanging of roofs in the longwall faces and their dynamic impacts on mechanized complexes, to ensure the safety of reused mine workings in the coal face operation area, and also to create a system of cracks in the coal seam upper side along the entire length of the face and increase the efficiency of preliminary degassing without creating a large number of intermediate mine workings. A technique for the numerical study of reservoir properties of rocks containing a system of cracks is proposed. An algorithm and software for creating two-dimensional stochastic systems of cracks with a given distribution of the coordinates of their centers, lengths, and orientations are developed. Based on the finite element method, the problem of fluid filtration in a fractured massif is numerically investigated. The influence of parameters of crack systems on the filtration properties of the medium is shown.