In the longwall exploitation system, the main gates are subject of the most intensive movements of the rock mass, where the proximity of the excavation front is a key factor. The paper presents the results of a research on the constants mb and s of Hoek-Brown failure criterion for the rocks surrounding the gallery: shale, sandy shale, coal and medium-grained sandstone, in relation to the distance to longwall face. The research comprised numerical modeling based on convergence monitoring records. The convergence measurements were carried out on three stations in a selected maingate in a coal mine from Upper Silesia Coal Basin near Jastrzębie-Zdrój, concurrently with changing distance to the longwall face. The measured were the width, the height and the heave of the floor of the gate. The measurements showed that the convergence at the longwall-maingate crossing was 1.5-3 times greater than in the locations much further from the longwall face. It was demonstrated that this effect was due to continuously changing properties of the rock-mass surrounding the gallery that can be expressed as decreasing empirical parameters mb i s of Hoek-Brown’s criterion. These parameters are decreasing exponentially together with the distance to the longwall face The consistency between the theoretical and factual curve varies between 70% to 98%. The change of each of the parameters can be described by general equation P = a· exp(–b·d), where a, b are constants, and d is the distance to the excavation face. The authors highlight that during the measurements period the horizontal stress was 1.45 to 1.61 times greater than the concurrent vertical stress. The so high horizontal stress causes heave of unsupported gallery floor which is commonly observed in the mines in Silesia.

For the prevention and control of rockburst in underground coal mines, a detailed assessment of a rockburst hazard area is crucial. In this study, the dependence between stress and elastic wave velocity of axially-loaded coal and rock samples was tested in a laboratory. The results show that P-wave velocity in coal and rock is positively related to axial stress and can be expressed by a power function. The relationship showed that high stress and a potential rockburst area in coal mines can be determined by the elastic wave velocity anomaly assessment with passive seismic velocity tomography. The principle and implementation procedure of passive seismic velocity tomography for elastic wave velocity were introduced, and the assessment model of rockburst hazard using elastic wave velocity anomaly was built. A case study of a deep longwall panel affected by rockbursts was introduced to demonstrate the effectiveness of tomography. The rockburst prediction results by passive velocity tomography closely match the dynamic phenomenon in the field, which indicates the feasibility of elastic wave velocity anomaly for rockburst hazard prediction in coal mines.