Evaluation of the Mechanical Instability of Mining Roadway Overburden: Research and Applications

Under the superposed action of the primary rock stress and the mining stress, the compound roof of a roadway will have irregular plastic failure zone with greater depth, resulting in a wide range of non-uniform deformations and roof failures. Mastering the deformation and failure characteristics of this roof is essentially to recognize the development of the plastic zone of a compound roof. In this paper, the on-site roof detection method is mainly adopted to arrange a large number of boreholes for visualization and the deep displacement monitoring with the high-density points. Combined with numerical simulations, the rupture development characteristics and deformation mechanisms of the compound roof are revealed. The results show that the magnitude and direction of the principal stress of surrounding rock in a mining roadway are constantly changing, and the penetrating phenomenon will occur during the plastic zone expansion process. The order of the compound roof rupture as follows: shallow strata plastic failure, deep strata penetrating plastic failure and middle strata rupture. Severe roof deformation is mainly caused by plastic failure, and the strong deformation pressure caused by deep strata penetration plastic failure can easily lead to tensile failure and rupture in the middle strata. According to the plastic zone penetration development of the compound roof, the hierarchical support design led by the long-extension bolt is carried out on the test roadway. The monitoring results show that the roof is controlled well. The research results can provide a reference for the control of compound roofs in mining roadways.