Under deep mining conditions, coal and rock masses are subjected to high in situ stress and strong mining-induced disturbances, leading to intensified stress unloading, concentration, and redistribution processes. The stability of surrounding rock is therefore closely related to mine safety. Direct, real-time, and continuous monitoring of in situ stress magnitude, orientation, and evolution is a critical requirement for deep underground engineering. To overcome the limitations of conventional stress monitoring methods under high-stress and strong-disturbance conditions, a novel in situ stress monitoring device was developed, and its performance was systematically verified through laboratory experiments. Typical unloading–reloading and biaxial unequal stress paths of deep surrounding rock were adopted. Tests were conducted on intact specimens and specimens with initial damage levels of 30%, 50%, and 70% to evaluate monitoring performance under different degradation conditions. The results show that the device can stably acquire strain signals throughout the entire loading–unloading process. The inverted monitoring stress exhibits high consistency with the loading system in terms of evolution trends and peak stress positions, with peak stress errors below 5% and correlation coefficients (R2) exceeding 0.95. Although more serious initial damage increases high-frequency fluctuations in the monitoring curves, the overall evolution pattern and unloading response remain stable. Combined acoustic emission results further confirm the reliability of the monitoring outcomes. These findings demonstrate that the proposed device enables accurate and dynamic in situ stress monitoring under deep mining conditions, providing a practical technical approach for surrounding rock stability analysis and disaster prevention.
Xi et al. (Thu,) studied this question.