Appropriate Support Design for Incline Lip Opening and Drivages in Fragile Rock Mass Formation: An Empirical and Numerical Based Case Study

Abstract

The production of underground coal is directly related to the safety of the mine. When any fatality occurs, mostly due to roof fall and side fall, production of the mines gets affected. In India roof fall in underground mines still contributes a fair amount of percentage, i.e., in and around 40% towards the fatalities of the accident. Thus the roof fall in underground mines has to be minimized by the application of a rational and appropriate support system. The design of support for soft rock formation still drives a real concern for engineers as it requires lots of effort, hard work and experience. In this study, support design is given for the incline lip opening in fragile and soft rock geological formation. The study on the apt support for incline drivages has also been conducted. Rock load has been estimated applying CMRI rock mass classification, Bieniawski’s Geomechanical System and numerical modeling. On comparing rock load obtained by CMRI rock mass classification has been observed on upper side. To ensure the safety and stability of incline drivages, CMRI rock mass classification has been considered to design a support system so as to maintain factor of safety above two.