Destabilization Mechanism and Stability Control of the Surrounding Rock in Stope Mining Roadways below Remaining Coal Pillars: A Case Study in Buertai Coal Mine

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is devoted to stability control of the surrounding rock and roadways during mining of close distance coal seams. The topic is interesting but there some points which have to be revised before the manuscript might be published:

Major points:

1.       Abstract is too large, I believe authors might shorten it by deleting the unnecessary details which are reflected in the text but highlighting the novelty of approach and results.

2.       While reading the section 2 of manuscript authors refer to the strength envelopes L1 and L2 as well as different stresses sigma1, sigma2 and sigma3 and use them in Coulomb-Mohr’s diagrams analysis. Please specify, how did you get all the strength parameters of rocks (especially transition from L1 to L2 is of particular interest) and stress amounts. These data are missing. Otherwise your conclusions might be erroneous.

3.       I did not catch the meaning of subsection 4.3. Please clarify what new did you propose to solve the unstability problem of roadway ribs, floor and ceiling and how does it affect the redistribution of stress. Otherwise, this section seems to narrate the applied support system without any explanations of its necessity.

4.       The same concern is about the subsection 5.1, hydraulic fracturing demands a great separate discussion or even deserves to be content of another manuscript. The stress redistribution during this expensive operation need to be discussed if you mention this material in your manuscript. Otherwise I suggest to delete it completely.

5.       Generally, I believe that numerical modeling section and industrial testing sections are poorly connected within the manuscript. Please revise the results part.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Hello dear writers

Thanks for your efforts to expand mining engineering and related issues. There are some points about your manuscript that I think you should revise to improve the scientific level :

1. Title : you should mention "Buertai Coal Mine" as case study in the title.

2. Introduction: Please state the objectives of the study clearly and regularly at the end of the introduction section. It is for the readers to understand the research well.

3. Geological Condition : please provide a  general geological map of the region and locate Buertai Coal Mine to show situation of your study area in the china.

4. Line 124: Please rewrite Figure 2 caption. It is currently unclear.

5. In general you need these sections: 3. Methodology and raw data 4. Results and discussion. Currently, your manuscript does not have a standard structure. Please place sections 3, 4 and 5 (of present manuscript) in the mentioned sections.

6. Figures 10 and 11 do not have  clear caption, please rewrite the captions more precisely.

7. Figure 9 : please explain the parts of (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) in the caption precisely.

8. Figure 12 : please explain the parts of (a) and (b) in the caption precisely.

9. Line 200: "During its service life". this sentence is vague, please rewrite clearly.

Best regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

 

Hello dear authors

Thank you for your revision.

I have carefully reviewed your manuscript, in the "methodology section" please provide a "technical flowchart" to show readers how you conducted your research briefly. You should list all analytical methods and other methods step by step in a flowchart. Finally, please add the flowchart at the end of the methodology section.

Please check your references for more updated resources on coal mining. For example, you can use this article in your manuscript to introduce a comprehensive perspective on coal mining:

Ahmadi, M. E.,Mesroghli, S., Hedayat, B., Nazerian, H., Shirazi, A., & Shirazy, A. (2022). Assessment of the Influence of Sulfuric Acid/Hydrogen Peroxide Mixture on Organic Sulfur Reduction of High Sulfur Coals and Their Chemical Composition. Open Journal of Geology, 12(3), 199-214.‏

Best regards

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for your comments. We have added technical flowchart to at the end of the methodology section.On the basis of the original reference resources, we have carried on the extensive reference study. In addition, we also carefully studied the references recommended by the reviewers and benefited a lot from these research works. So we added some important references to the introduction.
Best regards.