Application of superposition method to study the mechanical behaviour of overlying strata in longwall mining

The sudden failure of roof strata is one of the fiercest dynamic instability events in underground longwall mining. To understand the mechanical behaviour of strata, researchers simplified the strata as a beam over an elastic foundation. However, some reported models involved a big equation system with unknown constants of integration. Solving such equations is a complicated mathematical task. As an improvement, this study adopted the...