Underground exploitations inside safety pillar shafts when considering the effective use of a coal deposit

Abstract

Abstract Underground mining exploitation creates damage in surface building structure and in underground constructions as well. For this reason, many mining companies gave up carrying out excavations in safety pillar shafts. Currently, the situation on the market is changing. The continuous increase in excavation depth combined with an increase in exploitation costs resulted in many mining companies trying to find cheaper solutions. One of the methods is to carry out partial exploitations inside safety pillar shafts. Such exploitation is much cheaper than ordinary, because it decreases the exploitations depth, the length of transportation drifts, etc. The functionality of the shaft and its infrastructure have to be fulfil. The authors present a methodology for calculating the effects of mining on mine shafts using geometric integral methods. The paper presents the assumption of the first method developed by Bals (1939), a method based on the so-called Professor Knothe Theory (1951) and the German method of Ruhrkohle (Ehrhardt and Sauer 1961). Based on these methods, operational planning rules are given for mining in protective pillars during coal bed exploitation; additionally, the dimensioning method for shaft pillars is specified. Presented solutions are illustrated with examples from mining practice, where the continuous miner system was planned in the direct area of the mining shaft.