Risk Analysis and Prediction of Floor Failure Mechanisms at Longwall Face in Parvadeh-I Coal Mine using Rock Engineering System (RES)

The floor failure at longwall face decreases productivity and safety, increases operation costs, and causes other serious problems. In Parvadeh-I coal mine, the timber is used to prevent the puncture of powered support base into the floor. In this paper, a rock engineering system (RES)-based model is presented to evaluate the risk of floor failure mechanisms at the longwall face of E (2) and W (1) panels. The presented model is used to determine the most probable floor failure mechanism, effective factors, damaged regions and remedial actions. From the analyzed results, it is found that soft floor failure is dominant in the floor failure mechanism at Parvadeh-I coal mine. The average of vulnerability index (VI) for soft, buckling and compressive floor failure mechanisms was estimated equal to 52, 43 and 30 for both panels, respectively. By determining the critical VI for soft floor failure mechanism equal to 54, the percentage of regions with VIs beyond the critical VI in E (2) and W (1) panels is equal to 65.5 and 30, respectively. The percentage of damaged regions showed that the excess amount of used timber to prevent the puncture of weak floor below the powered support base is equal to 4,180,739 kg. RES outputs and analyzed results showed that setting and yielding load of powered supports, length of face, existent water at face, geometry of powered supports, changing the cutting pattern at longwall face and limiting the panels to damaged regions with supercritical VIs could be considered to control the soft floor failure in this mine. The results of this research could be used as a useful tool to identify the damaged regions prior to mining operation at longwall panel for the same conditions.