A study on the reasonable width of narrow coal pillars in the section of hard primary roof hewing along the air excavation roadway

Abstract Aiming at the reasonable width of the narrow coal pillar of a fully mechanized caving face and the safety support of roadway, taking the coal pillar in the section between 110503 and 110505 face of the Yushuling Coal mine as the research background, a model of the hard basic roof fracture structure of fully mechanized caving face is established through theoretical analysis, and the roadway with narrow coal pillar is analyzed mechanically. Combined with the geological conditions of the working face, it is concluded that the low‐stress area is less than 3.29 m. When the internal stress field of the low‐stress environment is considered in the roadway layout, the influence of mining and the essential roof hardness should be considered. The reasonable size of the narrow coal pillar is 3 ~ 6 m, thinking that the load borne by the coal pillar is less than the ultimate strength of the coal pillar. The limit equilibrium theory calculates that the reasonable width of a coal pillar is at least 4 m. The stress and displacement of coal pillars with different widths of 3, 4, 5 and 6 m are analyzed by numerical simulation, and the 4 m narrow coal pillars are simulated and verified. Field industrial tests show that coal pillar and roadway surrounding rock deformation are small under asymmetric surrounding rock control. The research results have been successfully applied to engineering practice and can provide a reference for the research method of narrow coal pillar width under a hard basic roof.