Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 673–676

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Mining Science and Technology (China)

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mstc

Active velocity tomography for assessing rock burst hazards in a kilometer

deep mine
He Hu a,⇑, Dou Linming a, Li Xuwei a, Qiao Qiuqiu a, Chen Tongjun b, Gong Siyuan c
a
State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Mine Safety, School of Mines, China University of Mining & Technology, Xuzhou 221008, China
b
School of Resource and Earth Science, China University of Mining & Technology, Xuzhou 221008, China
c
School of Information and Electrical Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology, Xuzhou 221008, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Active velocity tomography was used to determine the stress state and rock burst hazards in a deep coal
Received 27 November 2010 mine. The deepest longwall face, number 3207 in the Xingcun colliery, was the location of the field trials.
Received in revised form 12 December 2010 The positive correlation between stress and seismic velocity was used to link the velocity data with
Accepted 5 January 2011
stratum stresses. A GeoPen SE2404NT data acquisition system was used to collect seismic data from
Available online 11 November 2011
300 g explosive charges fired by instantaneous electric detonator and located in the tail entry. The
geophones were installed on the rock bolts in the head entry of LW3207. Velocity inversion shows an
Keywords:
inhomogeneous distribution of stress in the longwall face that could not be obtained from theory or
Tomography
Rock burst
numerical simulations. Three abnormally high P-wave velocity regions were identified that were located
Stress field on the corners of the two roadways and at the face end near the rail entry side. The maximum velocity
Seismic velocity gradient is located at the open cut off near the rail entry and is the area most dangerous for rock burst.
Hazard assessment Mining-induced tremors recorded by a micro-seismic monitoring system demonstrated that the position
of energy release during mining coincides with the high velocity gradient area. This technology aids tech-
nicians in the coal mine as they design measures to weaken or eliminate potential danger during subse-
quent mining.
Ó 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology.

1. Introduction effective, and accurate hazard assessment tomography has rapidly

More and more mines in eastern China, and elsewhere, reach
depths exceeding 1 km. At these depths new issues arise from
the underground pressure including new rules for the mining
induced stress field as well as new catastrophic dynamic phenom-
ena, rock burst being the most unpredictable and violent of these
[1–3]. Possible effects from rock burst include injuries and fatal
accidents, damage to equipment, construction and production
delays, and higher costs of construction and operation. Hence it
is a topic of great research interest for mining engineers around
the world [4].
A variety of countermeasures are in use to monitor and predict
the danger from rock burst but no method has been entirely reli-
able because of various limits and poor field information [5].
Today, velocity tomography is being developed to ascertain the
stress distribution and to determine the seismic zones over a large
scale. This method is based on the fact that seismic wave velocity
usually increases linearly with stress at lower stress levels and
then plateaus at higher stress levels, which has been proven by
many authors [6,7]. Since it provides the advantage of rapid,
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 13705206814.
E-mail address: hehu_cumt@126.com (H. He).
become a research frontier at home and abroad [8–10].
2. Theory of velocity tomography
Velocity tomography falls into two main categories, active or
passive, according to the seismic source [11]. Active sources, such
as hammer strike, controlled blasting, or other sources of vibration,
in known positions are advantageous since the seismic location is
predictable and the energy relatively intense. This allows accurate
coordinates to be obtained and can eliminate secondary errors.
Active tomography also provides assessment results before the
coal seam extraction that allows the technical staff to develop nec-
essary preventive methods. Passive tomography usually uses
micro-seismic events induced by mining activities that may be
characterized as remote and that occur several times during the
longwall face extraction. Nevertheless, passive tomography is chal-
lenging because of imprecise source location, inadequate knowl-
edge of ray paths, and limited inversion areas; the latter being
true because most mining-induced seismic events are adjacent to
the exploitation zone.
We chose active tomography to find the velocity structure and
then deduce the stress field state. From this an evaluation of areas
with high rock burst hazard can be made.

1674-5264/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology.
doi:10.1016/j.mstc.2011.10.003
674 H. He et al. / Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 673–676
Arrays of seismic sources and geophones are arranged around
the longwall face, the arrival time of the received wave, which is
always the P-wave, can be easily determined. The seismic velocity
along a ray is given by the ray-path distance divided by the time to
travel between the source and receiver, as indicated in Fig. 1. The
time is the integral of the inverse velocity, 1/V, or the slowness, S:
Z Z
ds
Ti ¼ ¼ Sðx; yÞds
Li Vðx; yÞ Li
where Ti is the travel time, Li is the spread path of the i’th seismic
wave, ds is an infinitesimal arc, V is the velocity, and S is the
slowness. This equation is actually a typical nonlinear problem.
For infinitesimal changes in the velocity structure the ray-path, Li,
can be treated as a straight line. However, the path is typically a
curve due to complexity in the rock mass. The inversion area is
decomposed into N grids and the travel time in the i’th grid is:
X
N puter. The wave data was recorded and an example of one set of
Ti ¼ aij sj
j¼1
where aij is the length of the i’th ray crossing the j’th grid. A matrix
is used to describe the collected seismic ray paths passing through
the grid cells. The matrix includes travel time, distance, and slow-
ness for each grid element. The velocity can be determined by inver-
sion as shown in Eq. (3):
AS ¼ T
A ¼ ðaij ÞMN
where A is the distance matrix, (M  N), S is a 1  M matrix, and T is
a matrix holding the travel time per ray (1  N). aij is the length of
the i’th ray crossing the j’th grid. Solving these equations one
obtains the slowness distribution and thus an inversion of the
velocity structure in the zone being studied.
3. An in situ experiment
3.1. Coal mine
The study was conducted in a kilometer deep underground coal
mine located in Shandong province in eastern China. Top coal cav-
ing will be used in LW3207, where the coal seam ranges in thick-
ness from 5.1 to 6.5 m at a depth from 1260 to 1360 m. This is
currently the deepest longwall face in China. Both sides of the long-
wall face are solid coal seam. Numerous mining tremors and rock
bursts have occurred in the past during coal winning at the other
faces and roadways of the mine.
Y Seismic source
(x i , yj )
X the corners of the entries that abut stress concentrations. High
Geophones (x1, y 1)
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of velocity tomography.
3.2. Design of the experiment
The stress field was surveyed and a identification of the hazard-
ous areas made by effective use of active tomography. Blasting is
the seismic source and was located in the tail entry. Sources were
spaced from Nos. 1001 to 1010 at 8 m intervals near the open cut
off. This increases the ray path density. Additional sources were
evenly spaced at 16 m intervals. A series of 54 geophones spaced
ð1Þ
at a uniform interval of 8 m were mounted to the existing rock
bolts in the head entry. The layout of the design is illustrated in
Fig. 2.
Data acquisition and analysis were done with a GeoPen
SE2404NT and a host computer. Five acquisition stations and 54
channels of geophone signal were used. In this trial the array
was moved ahead once to completely cover the inversion region.
The blasting holes were drilled 4 m into the coal seam and
charged with 300 g of explosive fired by instantaneous electric
detonators that were simultaneously triggered by the host com-
ð2Þ data being as shown here as Fig. 3.
3.3. Inversion methods
The simultaneous iterative reconstructive technique (SIRT)
algorithm is characterized by quick convergence and divergence.
It is widely used to solve Eqs. (1)–(3) as a route to the recon-
structed velocity distribution. This method has proved to be a reli-
ð3Þ able and stable technique for seismic velocity tomography. The
ð4Þ study area was divided into a series of 10 m by 10 m grids. A total
of 2379 rays crossed the study zone, as shown in Fig. 4. This size is
sufficiently accurate for ascertaining the stress state in the strata.
Bending curve rays are put into the inversion, which is favorable
for the model portrayed. The average velocity of 3450 m/s is input
as the initial velocity and a limiting range from a minimum of
1000 m/s to a maximum of 6000 m/s is also used to improve the
algorithmic efficiency.
4. Velocity inversion
4.1. Velocity inversion results
Traditionally, only the gravitational stress in the vertical direc-
tion can be estimated. Then elastic theory is used to calculate the
horizontal stress by using a coefficient called the side pressure
coefficient. Alternately, a computer numerical model may be used
to simulate the stress field before coal extraction but this stress
field has been uniformly found to have a huge difference compared
to reality.
In comparison, velocity tomography exhibits obvious strengths
because of the link between seismic velocity and stress. Fig. 5
shows the P-wave velocity within the coal seam. The results are
an uneven velocity field with a velocity distribution ranging from
high to low speed. Three higher speed areas exist located along
the corners of the tail gate and head gate, and at the face end of
the tail gate side. The velocity near the corner of the tail entry is
smaller than at the head entry because the coal has been broken
there. The open-cut-off entry is an area of low speed so the velocity
gradient is quite high at the face end where the most dangerous
zones for rock burst exist. So care where rock burst might occur
must be taken when mining begins. Extra high velocities are
mainly caused by geological structures such as faults, folds, or
stress is a sufficient condition for rock burst to occur. The longwall
face was divided into different zones based on the stress distribu-
tion. This leads to a series of corresponding rock burst hazard zones
 H. He et al. / Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 673–676 675

1001
010 Source :
0 Source:1035 Source:1030 Source:1025 Source:1020 Source:1015 Source:1
04

cut off
e:1
urc
So 72 m

4m
3
:104 160 m Tailentry
rce

Open
u
So
LW 3207
Headentry
ne:2001
0 11 Geopho
phone:2
Geophone:2031 Geophone:2021 Geo
61 Geophone:2051 Geophone:2041
ne:20
ho
op
Ge
66
20
ne:
ho
op
Ge

Fig. 2. Layout of the tomographic observing system in LW3207.

showing different degrees of hazard. This provides rich information

CMA about the stress state in the coal seam and makes prevention and
0 10 20 30 40 50 control methods much more targeted and efficient. At the same
time it significantly reduces the cost.

40
4.2. Velocity inversion compared to seismic events

60 A micro-seismic system developed by the Central Mining

Time (ms)

Institute of Poland was installed around the work face to monitor

mining induced tremors during coal winning at LW3207. Micro-
80
seismicity from elastic energy released during the rupture of coal
or the surrounding rock can reflect the stress concentration in
100 the stratum. Research has shown that the longwall face will prob-
ably encounter rock burst if tremors occur frequently during
roadway excavation [12,13]. The results from seismic monitoring
120 can be used to verify the velocity tomography and the determina-
tion of hazardous zones.
Fig. 3. A sample seismic wave recording.
Fig. 6 indicates the energy released from tremors during tunnel-
ing. Most of the region shows stable energy release but near the

Fig. 4. Inversion grid and ray-paths across the study area.

1
Source:100
0
Source:1035 Source:1030 Source:1025 Source:1020 Source:1015 Source:101
0 4.3 km/s
04
e :1
f

ur c
c ut of

So 4.1 km/s
44
: 10 Tailentry 3.9 km/s
3. 2
3 .2

r ce
O p en

So
u 3. 5 3. 5
3.5 3.7 km/s
LW3207
2

3.5 km/s
3.

3. 2
3 .Headentry
5 3.3 km/s
3 .7
5

ne: 2001
3.

pho
:2011 Geo 3.1 km/s
Geophone:2051 Geophone:2041 Geophone:2031 Geophone:2021 Geophone
1
06 2.9 km/s
e :2
h on
op 2.7 km/s
Ge

Fig. 5. P-wave velocity distribution after inversion by tomography.

676 H. He et al. / Mining Science and Technology (China) 21 (2011) 673–676
Fig. 6. Energy released by mining tremors during the roadway excavation.
open cut off, near the tail entry side, the observed energy release
increased. This location coincides with maximum gradient of the
P-wave velocity, as noted above, and confirms the validity of veloc-
ity tomography for seismic and rock burst hazard determination
and assessment.
5. Conclusions
Active velocity tomographic techniques were applied to the
deepest longwall coal mining face in China. Using the SIRT
algorithm the velocity profile in the coal seam was inverted to give
what can be interpreted qualitatively as the stress field. From this a
design for the rock burst hazard zones was constructed. The veloc-
ity distribution shows an inhomogeneity in the longwall face that
could not otherwise be obtained either from theory or from com-
puter simulations. So this provides a potential technique for stress
determination.
Three abnormal high P-wave velocity regions at LW3207 were
observed located at the corners of the two roadways and at the face
end near the rail entry side. The maximum velocity gradient exists
at the open cut off near the rail entry, which is the most dangerous
area for rock burst.
Micro-seismic events authenticated the accuracy and efficiency
of the tomography: the released energy was concentrated in a
region coincident with the maximum velocity gradient.
Application of the tomographic method allows prediction of
high stress and high hazard regions. This gives a focus for techni-
cians in the coal mine when designing preventive measures to
mitigate or eliminate the potential danger during mining.
Acknowledgments
Financial support for this work was provided by the National
Basic Research Program of China (No. 2010CB226805), the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 50474068 and
50490273), the Independent Foundation of State Key Laboratory
of Coal Resources and Mine Safety (No. SKLCRSM10X05) and the
Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and
Mine Safety (No. 10KF05) and is gratefully acknowledged.
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