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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Geoscience and Society
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2024.1470723
This article is part of the Research Topic Exploration, Development, and Protection of Earth’s Resources and Environment: Methods, Techniques, Applications, Prospects, Insights, and Problems View all 18 articles

Study on failure mechanism of cracked coal rock and law of gas migration

Provisionally accepted
Feng Du Feng Du 1,2,3Bing Liang Bing Liang 4Yixing Ren Yixing Ren 5Xingchuan Liao Xingchuan Liao 5*Lingjun Pei Lingjun Pei 5Zuoyuan Fan Zuoyuan Fan 6Wei Liu Wei Liu 7
  • 1 College of Mining, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, China
  • 2 China Coal Technology and Engineering Group Shenyang Research Institute, Fushun, China
  • 3 State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Safety Technology, Fushun, China
  • 4 School of Mechanics & Engineering, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, China
  • 5 School of Civil Engineering and Geomatics, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
  • 6 School of New Energy and Materials, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
  • 7 Development Department, PetroChina Southwest Oil & Gasfield Company, Chengdu, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    China possesses abundant coal resources and has extensive potential for exploitation. Nevertheless, the coal rock exhibits low strength, and the coal seam fractures due to mining activities, leading to an increased rate of gas emission from the coal seam. This poses significant obstacles to the exploration and development of the coal seam. This paper focuses on studying the failure mechanism of fractured coal rock by conducting uniaxial and triaxial compression experiments on the coal rock found at the Wangpo coal mine site. Simultaneously, in conjunction with the findings from the field experiment, a gas migration model of the mining fracture field is constructed to elucidate the pattern of coal seam gas distribution during mining-induced disturbances.The study structure reveals that coal rock exhibits three distinct failure modes: tensile failure, shear failure, and tension-shear failure. The intricate fissure in the rock layer will intensify the unpredictability of rock collapse patterns. The compressive strength of coal rock diminishes as the confining pressure drops. The coal rock in the working face area will collapse as a result of the lack of confining pressure. In the rock strata above the mining fracture zone, the gas pressure is first higher and then significantly falls with time. After 100 days of ventilation, the low gas pressure area changes little, so to ensure the safety of the project, the ventilation time of the fully mechanized mining surface is at least 100 days. The research results will help to establish the core technology system of coal seam development and improve the competitiveness of coal seam resources in China.

    Keywords: physical experiment, Failure mechanism, Gas migration, Coal rock, numerical simulation

    Received: 26 Jul 2024; Accepted: 09 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Du, Liang, Ren, Liao, Pei, Fan and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Xingchuan Liao, School of Civil Engineering and Geomatics, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.