Underground mining, especially coal mines, are prone to causing gradual sinking or caving in of the ground above. This problem can have indirect impacts on nearby structures and water resources. To prevent this from occurring, accurate assessment of the type, severities and location and knowledge of the surrounding structures are crucial to mitigate a collapse.
Once the causes and extents of the structural disturbances are identified, designing proper and cost-effective mitigation measures is often relatively easy. Based on the principle of influence function method, a series of subsidence prediction models have been developed at in the Department of Mining Engineering at Statler College for predicting dynamic and final surface and subsurface subsidence for longwall, room and pillar mining operations commonly found in the United States coal industry.
Affiliated Faculty
Recent Publications
- Luo, Y., 1989, Integrated Computer Model for Predicting Surface Subsidence Due to Underground Coal Mining -- CISPM, Ph.D. Dissertation, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, UMI order No. 9020385, 168 pp.
- Peng, S.S. and Y. Luo, 1988, "Determination of Stress Field in Buried Thin Pipeline Resulting from Ground Subsidence Due to Longwall Mining," Mining Science and Technology, Vol. 6, pp. 205-216 (Refereed).
- Luo, Y. and S.S. Peng, 1989, "CISPM -- A Subsidence Prediction Model," Proc. 30th U.S. Symposium on Rock Mechanics, Ed. A.W. Khair, A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam, Netherlands, pp. 853-860.
- Luo, Y. and S.S. Peng, 1990, "A Mathematical Model for Predicting Final Subsidence Basin in Hilly Regions," Proc. AEG National Symposium on Mine Subsidence -- Prediction and Control, Ed. C.D. Elifrits, Association of Engineering Geologists, pp. 223-231, (Republished in AEG Bulletins, Refereed).
- Luo, Y. and S.S. Peng, 1990, "A Mathematical Model for Predicting Subsidence over Chain Pillars Between Mined-out Longwall Panels," Proc. AEG National Symposium on Mine Subsidence -- Prediction and Control, Ed. C.D. Elifrits, Association of Engineering Geologists, pp. 247-257 (Republished in AEG Bulletins, Refereed).