Instability leading to coal bumps and nonlinear evolutionary mechanisms for a coal-pillar-and-roof system

This paper studies the unstable mechanisms of the mechanical system that is composed of the stiff hosts (roof and floor) and the coal pillar using catastrophe theory. It is assumed that the roof is an elastic beam and the coal pillar is a strain-softening medium which can be described by the Weibull’s distribution theory of strength. It is found that the instability leading to coal bump depends mainly on the system’s stiffness ratio k, which is...