Support technology of deep roadway under high stress and its application

Abstract

Roadway instability has been a major concern in the fields of mining engineering. This paper aims to provide practical and efficient strategy to support the roadways under high in-situ stress. A case study on the stability of deep roadways was carried out in an underground mine in Gansu province, China. Currently, the surrounding rock strata is extremely fractured, which results in a series of engineering disasters, such as side wall collapse and severe floor heave in the past decades. Aiming to solve these problems, an improved support method was proposed, which includes optimal bolt parameters and arrangement, floor beam layout by grooving, and full length grouting. Based on the modeling results by FLAC3D, the new support method is much better than the current one in terms of preventing the large deformation of surrounding rock and restricting the development of plastic zones. For implementation and verification, field experiments, along with deformation monitoring, were conducted in the 958 level roadway of Mining II areas. The results show that the improved support can significantly reduce surrounding rock deformation, avoid frequent repair, and maintain the long-term stability of the roadway. Compared to the original support, the new support method can greatly save investment of mines, and has good application value and popularization value.