NUST MISIS’ College of Mining, Moscow, Russia

V. A. Eremenko, Director of Research Center for Applied Geomechanics and Convergent Mining Technologies, Professor at Department of Physical Processes in Mining and Geocontrol, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, prof.eremenko@gmail.com
V. A. Vinnikov, Head of Department, Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
A. S. Pugach, Associate Professor, Candidate of Engineering Sciences
M. A. Kosyreva, Postgraduate Student

Geomechanical substantiation of stability of honeycomb structures created in mines by drilling vertical cylindrical stopes is a relevant and challenging problem. The authors present a new geotechnical approach and a concept of an alternative convergent mining technology for salt rock masses. The idea is to change the direction of the stoping front advance from the horizontal tunneling to the top-downward or bottomupward stoping in drilled vertical openings of cylindrical shape. The simplest way to find an alternative is making a decision which is converse to the adopted practice. The rib pillar stability is calculated using the Turner–Shevyakov hypothesis applied to the conventional room-and-pillar mining and to the vertical cylindrical stopes with rib pillars with corners
cut off by circles. The analytical procedure is developed to determine stability of structural components in the honeycomb mines, and the limitations for applying the Shevyakov method to the conventional and new mining systems are defined. The article describes a selected variant of the numerical stress–strain modeling in a rib pillar with its corners cut off by vertical cylindrical stopes arranged in a square pattern for the conditions of a honeycomb structure mine at a depth of 600 m. It is planned to adapt the procedure of the rib pillar design for mining using the honeycomb structures under different-type natural stresses: gravitational, lithostatic and gravitational–tectonic.

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