Assignment-1

Applied Rock Mechanics

MN-521

M. Tech, Department of Mining Engineering

IIT BHU – 2020

Submitted by
Debasish nath
19152010

Q- Instrumentation plan for Bord and Pillar mining method.

This method is sometimes called room-and-pillar mining. It is commonly used
for flat or gently dipping bedded ores or coal seams. Pillars are left in place in a
regular pattern while the rooms are mined out. In many Bord and Pillar mines
that are nearing closure, the pillars are taken out, starting at the farthest point
from the mine haulage exit, retreating, and letting the roof come down upon the
floor. Room-and pillar-methods are well adapted to mechanization Before the
advent of modern pillar design in 1967, or the adoption of special precautions
when mining at depths shallower than about 40 m, little was known about what
size of pillars to leave behind. Sometimes, in their eagerness to extract the
maximum amount of coal, the old miners left pillars too small to support the
roof indefinitely. In addition, they sometimes ’robbed’ the pillars on their retreat
from the exhausted coal faces. The Bord and Pillar method is adopted for
working.
1. A seam thicker than 1.5 m,
2. A seam free from stone or dirt bands. Stone or dirt bands, if present in a
seam, can be
easily disposed of for strip packing in long wall advancing method of mining.
3. Seams at moderate depth,
4. Seams which are not gassy,
5. Seams with strong roof and floor which can stand for long period after
development stage
is over,
6. Coal of adequate crushing strength.

Instrumentation Plan Ranigunj, in the Eastern Coalfields Limited

(ECL) :
Description of the test site:

Drilling and instrumentation :

The work programme involved:
(1) Drilling vertical holes, 75 mm in diameter, from the surface to the coal seam
level, at various locations in the panel.
(2) Installing magnetic anchors in the boreholes at various horizons.
(3) Establishing surface levelling stations along and across the panel.
(4) Setting up reference collars over each borehole for measuring the movement
of anchors.
The boreholes were cored to the full depth by rotary diamond drills using
double-tube core barrels. The top few metres (zone of cohesionless soils) were
cased with steel pipes to prevent caving of the mouth of the borehole. The
anchors in the holes were positioned on the PVC tube (35 m m outer diameter
and 29 m m internal diameter). They were highly elastic in the axial direction
and very rigid in the radial direction. The contact between tube and natural
ground was made by a fill of a thin water-cement mixture. Care was taken to
keep the cement portion low in the mixture to avoid the shear strength of the fill
becoming higher than that of the natural material. The values for RQD were
used to select suitable zones for placement of magnetic anchors. The number of
anchors in each hole was between twelve and twenty depending upon the
distinct stratigraphic section and depth of boreholes. The deepest anchor was
located at approximately 1.5 m above the seam . To determine the surface
subsidence over the panel and the displacement of borehole collars with respect
to a remote, stable reference point (situated outside the influence of the ground
movement zone), pre-cast surface levelling stations, along and across the panel
were established. The levelling stations were spaced 10 m apart. The movement
of the anchors were measured with respect to the "reference-tripod" (the
borehole collars). Figure 4 shows position of vertical boreholes and levelling
stations across the panel NS-12 at Ratibati Colliery.

Monitoring of strata deformation:

The system of monitoring vertical movement of strata installed in the boreholes
is simple. The "probe", which works by magnetic induction as used to locate the
position of magnetic anchors in the strata. The "probe" is attached to a strain-
resistant twin-core electric cable mounted on a cable
reel (Fig. 5). When the probe was lowered, an
inductive coupling occured between the ring and the probe and an electrical
signal was transmitted to the surface through the twincore cable to a multimeter
in the form of a light or buzzer. The depth of anchors was measured by a steel
tape attached to the twin-core cable. However, it was necessary to ensure that
the probe was intrinsically safe for use in gassy mines. An inclinometer probe
was used to measure the progressive changes in the angle of inclination of the
casing in the borehole. The results were integrated over the length of the casing
to determine the horizontal displacement profile.

Bending moment approach for estimating sub-surface strata displacement :

By considering the beam theory, as used to test the strength of materials, it
appears reasonable to assume that each layer of rock strata within the
excavation panel is a separate beam having a different thickness, deflected
under its own weight and under the boundary condition of the free end (i.e. the
ends are free of movement). It may be further assumed that:
(1) the beam element remains plane during deformation,
(2) only straight beams having a constant cross-sectional area within the axis of
symmetry and the applied load lie in a plane containing the axis of symmetry
and the beam axis. Figure 6(a) and (b) show the two conditions, before and
after, loading. In Fig. 6(c) a small area dA has been considered and Fig. 6(d)
shows small segments subtending an angle dO at the centre of curvature.
For constant flexural rigidity, deflection may be expressed in the simplified
form
d4 y d2m
El = =K ( X)
dx 4 dx 2

where K(X) is the total loading intensity as shown in Figs. 6(c) and (f). The
deflection y caused in the beam is:
1
Y = EI [S(Sm.dx) d x + C . x + c ]

where:
E = Young's modulus of material,
 b d3
I = second moment of inertia =
12

m = moment of the force exerted on element dA,

C and c--constants and can be determined from boundary conditions.
Figure 7 shows the comparison of the results obtained from field measurements
and using the bending moment method. The calculated values are slightly lower
than the field values until approximately half the depth of the cover is reached,
after which they are similar. From intuition, it appears that with precise
geological logging and rock characterization of the borehole core, it could be
possible to estimate subsurface strata displacements with reasonable accuracy.