Title: Development of a stress-based approach for achieving the risk assessment of fault-related coal and gas outburst

Authors: Qinglong Zhou; Juan Herrera-Herbert; Arturo Hidalgo

Addresses: Departamento de Ingeniería Geológica y Minera, ETS de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), C/Alenza 4, 28003 Madrid, Spain ' Departamento de Ingeniería Geológica y Minera, ETS de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), C/Alenza 4, 28003 Madrid, Spain ' Departamento de Ingeniería Geológica y Minera, ETS de Ingenieros de Minas y Energía, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), C/Alenza 4, 28003 Madrid, Spain

Abstract: In underground mining, gas accumulation or gas content anomaly caused by geological structures often results in catastrophic coal and gas outburst accidents, this kind of outburst has already been reported for decades and caused thousands of casualties. However, so far there have been very few studies about how to conduct risk assessment for this kind of geological-structure-related outburst. In this study, our aim is to develop an approach to evaluate the risk of fault-related outburst. The approach developed in this study is a stress-based approach and it considers the associated factors including the gas pressure, the fault attitude and the tectonic stresses. The fault-related outburst index proposed in this work not only can be used for evaluating the fault sealing capability but also can be used for quantitatively assessing the risk degree of fault-related outburst. It is a practical approach and can be recommended to apply in more underground engineering. [Received: February 11, 2017; Accepted: August 17, 2017]

Keywords: gas outburst; fault sealing; fault plane; seal capability; mine disaster.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2019.101473

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2019 Vol.21 No.4, pp.509 - 524

Received: 20 Feb 2017
Accepted: 17 Aug 2017

Published online: 11 Aug 2019 *

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