Comparative investigation of the damage of coal subjected to pure water jets, ice abrasive water jets and conventional abrasive water jets

This paper firstly proposed using ice abrasive water jets (IAWJs) to slot coal seam to ensure the safe exploitation of coal mines. The performances of IAWJs, pure water jets (PWJs) and conventional abrasive water jets (CAWJs) breaking coal were simulated and compared using the coupled SPH-FEM methodology. The findings indicate that the breaking performance of coal samples subjected to abrasive water jets are more obvious than those of coal samples subjected to PWJs, while the performance achieved by CAWJs is slightly more evident than that by IAWJs. Most of the ice particles transformed into pure water after impacting and then flowed away with the backflow, while many abrasives remained in the coal under CAWJ impact. The specific energy consumption of breaking coal by IAWJs is obviously lower than that consumed by PWJs and CAWJs. Accordingly, it can be inferred that IAWJ is a promising technology in coal slotting applications