Toward Pillar Design to Prevent Collapse of Room-and-Pillar Mines

Details

• Personal Author:
  Zipf, R. Karl, Jr.
• Description:
  In some instances, extensive room-and-pillar working scan collapse with little warning and pose a serious risk to underground miners. Traditional strength-based pillar design methods applicable to coal or hard-rock mines use a factor of safety defined as pillar strength divided by pillar stress. Factor of stability, defined as local mine stiffness divided by post-failure pillar stiffness, may offer a way to design room-and-pillar mines and eliminate collapses. Three alternative design approaches to decreasing the risk of large-scale catastrophic collapses are described: the containment approach, the prevention approach, and the full-extraction approach. Until good data on the post-failure behavior of pillars become available, the containment and full-extraction options are the safest. The limitations in our ability to evaluate both the stability of old workings and the long-term performance of room-and-pillar mines are described.
• Subjects:
  NIOSH
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:na
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:cef00b0a4be9103d6ffcc8ecd795bc835c91f993c3363f4fbdb20db93eea1d99f97042a823ece9577d1f5402fbe5420ee31ca005fb985093c9ba477df4dd1dd8
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/9341/cdc_9341_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 865.60 KB ]