ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mater.
Sec. Mechanics of Materials
Study on initial fracture distribution and bearing damage evolution mechanism of disturbed coal samples in oil-rich coal deposits in western China
Provisionally accepted
YAWU SHAO1,2,3,4
Lei Zhu1,3,4
Chang Xin2*Gang Han1,3,4
Haifei Lin2Hu Liu1,3,4Jiahao Xie1,2,3,4Mingming Sun1,3,4Jin Wang1,3,4- 1China Coal Energy Research Institute Co Ltd, Xi'An, China
- 2Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, China
- 3China Coal（Ordos）Energy Technology Co . Ltd, Ordos, China
- 4Engineering Research Center for Rock Burst Prevention of China Coal Energy Company Limited, Ordos, China
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The simultaneous formation of stress transfer and structure optimization in deep underground engineering induces and determines the appearance and degree of dynamic disasters, especially in the complex stress and structure environment in deep ground. Oil-rich coal in western China mainly occurs in complex geological structures, and deformation, fracture and destruction of coal samples are all the results of fracture evolution under the action of external loads. For rock materials, fracture evolution under the action of external loads is an inherent property of rock materials. The characteristics of the original fissure structure of coal and the subsequent damage evolution process are the key factors determining the prevention and control of multi-source disasters in oil-rich coal mining in western China. In this paper, the initiation, expansion coalescence and fracture evolution process of coal microfissure under the action of multi-stage disturbance are determined by the analysis method of CT scanning and mechanical test. The results show that: By analyzing the differences of CT images of coal samples in different regions after initial oil and gas resource exploitation, binary images of cracks are used to qualitatively describe the evolution characteristics of cracks, and parameters such as coal CT number, crack number, trace width, gap length and crack density are used to quantitatively describe the spatio-temporal relationship between fracture structure characteristics and multi-stage repeated disturbances, combined with acoustic emission data characteristics. To reveal the fracture distribution and mechanical response mechanism of disturbed coal samples is of great significance for analyzing the safe and efficient coordinated mining of oil-rich coal in western China.
Keywords: Western oil-rich coal, Disturbed coal sample, Fracture distribution, Crack characterization, Damage evolution
Received: 13 Sep 2025; Accepted: 17 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 SHAO, Zhu, Xin, Han, Lin, Liu, Xie, Sun and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chang Xin
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