Deformation Mechanism of the Coal ahead of Fully Mechanized Caving Face under High-Intensity Mining Condition

In order to study the coal deformation and failure mechanism in fully mechanized caving face under the high-intensity mining, based on the equivalent mechanical model of transversely isotropic cylindrical coal with fractures, the equivalent equations for axial, radial, and volume strains of coal sample loaded in linear elastic and plastic stages were derived in this paper. The equivalent mechanical model shows good reliability through the conventional triaxial experiment. Taking the N1206 workface in Yuwu coal mine of Luan group as the example, we have simulated the stress concentration factor of the coal body ahead of the working face with FLAC and divided three regions according to stress distribution in coal mining. Mathematical equations were derived to express the horizontal and vertical stress, which provide theoretical guidance of the stress paths in triaxial experiment about real mining stress environment simulation. Experimental results show that the volume strain’s value is about 0.4% in the coal mass deformation progress of axial compression increasing slowly area. In axial compression increasing rapidly area, the volume strain’s value varies from 0.41% to 0.27%, and the radical strain changes from compression deformation to expansion deformation gradually. The volume strain of coal sample increases sharply in axial compression releasing rapidly area; meanwhile, there are good linear relationships between Poisson’s ratio and axial strain and radial strain.

Analysis and Evaluation Methods of Seismic Subsidence Characteristics of Loess and Field Seismic Subsidence

The objective of this research is to analyze the dynamic degeneration of loess and the evaluation method of field seismic subsidence. In this study, Q3 loess is taken as the research object, and the dynamic properties of loess with 10%, 20%, 30% and 35% moisture content are tested by triaxial experiment. In addition, seismic subsidence characteristics of loess with dry densities of 1.4g/cm3, 1.6g/cm3, and 1.8g/cm3 and consolidation stress ratios of 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6 are analyzed. Then the simplified seismic subsidence estimation method is used to calculate the relationship between seismic subsidence coefficients at different soil depth in one dimensional field, cycle times, and subsidence depth. The results show that the higher the water content of loess is, the greater the change of seismic subsidence appears. The larger the dry density of loess is, the smaller the change degree of seismic subsidence appears. The larger the consolidation stress ratio is, the greater the change of seismic subsidence occurs in loess. When the depth of soil reaches 9.5m, the maximum seismic subsidence coefficient can reach 0.8%. When the depth of soil layer is 10m, the degree of seismic subsidence is the largest. When the depth of soil layer is 12~16m, the settlement depth caused by earthquake subsidence is small. While the depth of soil layer is 8~12m, the settlement degree is large.

An Experimental Development to Characterise the Flow Phenomena at the Near-Wellbore Region

The understanding of rock characteristic and fluid flow behavior at the near-wellbore region is an important topic. Triaxial experiment setup can help to investigate these properties. In this research, a new triaxial experimental setup has been developed where the higher scale of the parameters such as higher reservoir pressure, and comparatively larger core sample can be used. High permeable synthetic porous samples are prepared to validate the device. The new triaxial experimental setup is validated with water as a base fluid. In the validation test, real samples and synthetic samples are used. First, flow in convergent direction is studied which represents as production at the in-situ condition. Then, the flow in divergent direction is examined that may represent the injection of fluid to enhance the hydrocarbon production. The near-wellbore flow phenomena are studied with real and synthetic samples. The results indicate that using this triaxial setup pressure drop and pressure buildup test can be explained. The new scientific setup is able to reduce the scale-up gap between laboratory data and field data to get actual reservoir flow phenomena.