Support failure of a high-stress soft-rock roadway in deep coal mine and the equalized yielding support technology: a case study

There are many soft-rock roadway coal mines in China. The surrounding rocks of the high-stress soft-rock roadways in deep mine are especially difficult to be supported using the traditional supporting way. In this study, the south wing rail roadway on the second level of Yunjialing coal mine in China was used as an example to analyze the deformation and failure characteristics and influencing factors of roadway. On this basis, this study proposed the equalized yielding support idea which employs the yielding rings to realize the pressure equalization on the bolts and cables in the section. To achieve this purpose, the first bolt-mesh-cable equalizing pressure yielding support was integrated with the second grouting reinforcement. The results proved that the yield rings of the bolts and cables on the spandrel of the arched roadway firstly developed yielding deformation; then the deformation extended to the vault of the roadway; the bolts and cables achieved a yielding extreme value of 15 and 18 tonnes, respectively. The roadway surrounding rock tended to be stable at the 26th day after the maintenance. The equalizing pressure yielding supporting technology plays a moderate pressure-releasing and actively controlling role on the surrounding rocks in the soft-rock roadway with large deformation. © 2015, The Author(s).