Key Factors Identification and Risk Assessment for the Stability of Deep Surrounding Rock in Coal Roadway

Abstract

In order to evaluate the stability of deep surrounding rock, all of the affecting factors should be theoretically identified. However, some factors have slight impacts on the stability of deep surrounding rock compared with others. To conduct an effective risk assessment, key factors should be first extracted. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and grey relation analysis (GRA) methods are integrated to determine the key factors. First, the AHP method is applied to sort the factors by calculating the weights of them. Seven out of fifteen factors are extracted as the key factors, which account for 80% of the weights. Further, the GCA method is used to validate the effects of these key factors by analyzing the correlation between the performance of each factor and that of the reference. Considering the influence of these key factors and experts’ judgements, the multilevel fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is adopted to obtain the risk level of the deep surrounding rock stability. Finally, the risk assessment of the deep surrounding rock in the E-Zhuang coal mine of Chinese Xinwen Mining Area illustrates the operability of the proposed method.