Research on reasonable coal pillar width of roadway driven along goaf in deep mine

Driving roadway along a goaf is commonly adopted for mining face of thick seam in a deep mine. Determining a reasonable width of coal pillar is a key scientific problem for driving roadway along a goaf in a deep mine. The paper took a roadway driven along a goaf at Zhaolou coal mine which is a typical kilometer-deep mine in China as engineering background. Field monitoring, model test, and numerical experiment are conducted. Stress and displacement evolution mechanism are analyzed with different pillar widths. The test results show that with the increase of coal pillar width, the peak stress value at the coal pillar working slope and integrated coal beside the roadway increases firstly and then tends to be stable, its position is transferred to the side of the roadway, and the deformation of coal pillar decreases gradually during roadway excavation. The coal pillar deformation and roadway vertical displacement increased as the coal pillar width increases under high abutment pressure. In order to reduce the waste of non-renewable resources and meet the requirements of bearing capacity and stability of coal pillars, a method is proposed for setting a reasonable width of coal pillars and the specific width of coal pillars is designed and applied in engineering practices based on the above research. All the tests are significant in the study of driving roadway along a goaf in a deep mine.