Prediction of the confidence interval for stability analysis of chain pillars in coal mines

The conventional deterministic approach based (DAB) methods are simple and widely used to determine an adequate chain pillar size in coal mines where geological settings, coal characterizations and mining methods have been explored. It is evident that such deterministic methods have some intrinsic limitations in handling uncertainties in material properties, non-regular geometries and different mining operations. In the deterministic stability analysis of a chain pillar, the safety factors as well as all input parameters are deterministic. Although, these parameters generally exhibit uncertainty and should lead to a probabilistic expression for the safety factor. The probabilistic analysis provides a confidence interval to express the reliability of chain pillars stability. In this paper, safety factor is defined as a probabilistic function and the failure probability of designed chain pillar of Tabas coal mine is then evaluated using the First Order Second Moment (FOSM) and the Advanced Second Moment (ASM) methods. The results of the probabilistic stability analysis show that the confidence interval for designed pillars with both mentioned methods applied are similar and their values vary from 84% to 88%. The results of such analyses can be used as a basis for decision-making about the size of chain pillars and reduce the risk of pillars stability as well as the uncertainties. However, a trade-off between cost is essential for making the final decision. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.