PREDICTION OF MULTI-SEAM MINING-INDUCED SURFACE SUBSIDENCE IN UNDERGROUND COAL MINE IN INDONESIA

Abstract

This paper attempts to predict the surface subsidence induced by multi-seam longwall mining in the PT Gerbang Daya Mandiri (GDM) underground coal mine in Indonesia. Several numerical models of multi-seam longwall mining under various depths were built in the finite difference code software “FLAC3D” which was used as a tool for numerical simulations. Effect of mining sequence and influence of lower seam mining were firstly investigated. The angle of draw (AoD) and maximum surface subsidence (S_max) were used to describe characteristics of the surface subsidence. Based on simulated results, it is indicated that the undermining provides a better mining sequence in multi-seam longwall mining compared to the overmining. Mining the coal seam in an undermining order will not cause any difficult mining conditions in a lower seam, whereas some ground control problems in an upper seam are expected when the coal seam is mined in an overmining order. Under all mining depths in the undermining, extracting the lower seam panels significantly influences the magnitude of surface subsidence. The AoD and S_max increase significantly after all panels in the lower seam is mined. This indicates that very large surface subsidence is expected when multi-seam mining is applied at GDM underground coal mine.  An application of some countermeasures such as adopting a large pillar width and a small panel width is suggested in this underground coal mine in order to minimize the surface subsidence caused by multi-seam longwall mining. Minimizing the surface subsidence by adopting a large pillar width and a small panel width is therefore numerically investigated in this paper. Based on simulated results, it is found that the AoD and S_max decrease significantly when larger pillar width and narrower panel width are adopted. The use of larger pillar width and narrower panel width result in smaller AoD and S_max.