Hazard Analysis of Spontaneous Combustion in Fully Mechanized Longwall Mining with Caving and Its Prevention Strategies

Fully mechanised long-wall top-coal caving mining (FMLTCM) has advantages of low cost, production centralisation etc. But this technique makes the faces advance slowly, forms large goaf space and leaves more broken coal behind mining face. These result in serious hazard of spontaneous combustion during mining which has become one of the main restricting factors to FMLTCM. According to the mining characteristics of FMLTCM and the investigations in practice, this paper analyses the characteristics of spontaneous combustion in FMLTCM faces, put forward state index and analytical method for the extent of risk of spontaneous combustion. It also analyses the extent of risk of top caving areas and the controlling strategies of spontaneous combustion in FMLTCM.