Tunnelling outburst potential affected by mechanical properties of coal seam

Coal and gas outburst is greatly affected by the stress distribution in front of the heading face when tunnelling in high gassy coal seam. In this paper, the FLAC3D software and Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion are used to study the stress differences in front of the heading face. A total of 31 homogeneous models are built to study the stress differences affected by the coal seam mechanical properties. And another 8 kinds of heterogeneous models are built to study the stress differences affected by the abruptly changes of coal seam mechanical properties. When tunnelling in homogeneous coal seam, the large elastic modulus of coal seam will increase the stress peak value in front of the heading face, but do not change the stress peak position. The small internal friction angle will push the stress peak far away from the heading face. Therefore, the range of stress-relief zone in front of the heading face could significantly increase. The small cohesion of the coal seam will also push the stress peak far away from the heading face, but will result in an increase in the stress peak value. The Poisson ratio and tensile strength of the coal seam have little influence on the value and position of stress peak. As the elastic modulus decreases, cohesion and internal friction angle can greatly increase the displacement of the coal in front of the heading face. Taking into account both the mechanical properties of coal seam and the corresponding stress peaks, gas outburst is not easy to occur in the homogeneous coal seam. When tunnelling in heterogeneous coal seam, the abrupt change of coal seam elastic modulus greatly affects the stress concentration peak. If the cohesion of the coal seams also changes greatly with the elastic modulus, the stress peak will be enhanced. The abrupt change of coal seam cohesion and Poisson ratio have a slight influence on the stress concentration, while the abrupt change of internal friction angle of coal seam have little effect on the stress concentration. An outburst accident is most likely triggered when the cohesion and elastic modulus of the coal seams change greatly at the same time. Outcomes of this study is very beneficial for the prediction and prevention of coal and gas outburst. Meanwhile, this study provides a reference for the setting of mechanical properties of the coal seam and rock layers in the numerical simulation of mining.