Numerical Simulation of Coal Mining Excavation Based on Discontinuous Deformation Analysis

The movement and deformation of rock stratum occur when the excavation is carries out during the underground mining process. Rock is a continuous-discontinuous material so the continuum mechanics method may not handle the rock problem well. The discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) method which discretizes the rock mass to block system can describe the large displacement and deformation of rock blocks, especially the rock stratum collapse. The DDA was employed in this paper to analysis a mining excavation process. The displacement field and stress field of rock stratum was computed. The result shows that the DDA can handle the mining excavation and the rock stratum movement and deformation problem well.