Experimental study on response and precursor of pressure stimulated currents of combined coal-rock under cycling stress

Abstract

The coal-rock combination body is prone to rock burst and surface subsidence under loading, and adopting effective monitoring methods are valuable. In this paper, cyclic loading and unloading (CLU) tests were conducted to investigate the response and precursor of pressure stimulated currents (PSCs) in coal-rock combination samples. The results indicate that the PSCs of the coal-rock combination samples have good response characteristics to stress. Furthermore, the PSCs between the two components are significantly larger and more stable than those of the coal body, which can clearly reflect the failure under a progressive failure mechanism and are related to the difference in the resistivities and microstructures of the components. During the CLU tests, the PSCs of each cycle are well fitted by the Gaussian distribution and have a memory effect. During the loading or unloading process of each cycle, the variation in PSCs with stress conforms to the power function relationship with exponent k. As the cycle number increases, the rates of increase in PSC under stress are gradually weakened, and the indexes of PSCs including exponent k increase or decrease sharply first and then remain stable or even decrease, which is due to the loading history. The stable state of these indexes with obvious inflection points in later cycles of CLU tests can be considered a precursor of coal-rock failure. The PSC flow direction between the two components is exactly opposite to that in the coal body. The results provide new ideas for the monitoring and prediction of coal-rock combination body failure, which is helpful for the prevention of geological disasters in mines.