During layered mining of extra-thick coal seams in deep rock-burst-prone mines, a thick bottom coal layer facilitates the accumulation of elastic strain energy in the floor strata. This stored energy may be released under mining-induced disturbances during retreat, thereby triggering rock-burst events. To mitigate floor energy accumulation at the lower-slice working face of extra-thick coal seams, previous studies have primarily adopted floor blasting for pressure relief. However, conventional blasting is often associated with poor energy utilization and limited controllability of the pressure-relief range, which hampers achieving the intended relief performance. Accordingly, this study proposes a shaped charge blasting scheme to reduce floor energy accumulation. ANSYS/LS-DYNA simulations and UDEC-based energy analyses, together with theoretical analysis and field validation, were conducted to clarify the mechanism of directional fracture propagation and the evolution of floor elastic energy before and after blasting. The results showed that the synergistic effects of the high-velocity jet and quasi-static pressure in shaped charge blasting generated a through-going fracture aligned with the maximum horizontal principal stress. This fracture effectively segmented the high-stress region in the floor and increased the maximum fracture length along the shaped charge direction to 10–13 times that achieved by conventional blasting. UDEC simulations and theoretical analysis indicated that the peak elastic energy in the floor was reduced by up to 54.08% after shaped charge blasting. Field measurements further showed that shaped charge blasting limited the maximum roadway floor heave to 300 mm and reduced floor deformation by 35–42% compared with the case without pressure relief. Overall, shaped charge blasting effectively blocks stress-transfer pathways and improves energy dissipation efficiency, providing theoretical support and a practical technical paradigm for safe and efficient mining of deep extra-thick coal seams.
Su et al. (Wed,) studied this question.