Book Description

This book is intended as a reference book for advanced graduate students and re-search engineers in rock mechanics related to mining engineering. The cemented tailings backfill (CTB) technique is widely used in deep underground mining, since this tech-nique is effective to support surrounding rock, control rockburst, reduce ground sub-sistence, and reduce surface disposal of tailings. Plenty of investigations have been attempted to experimentally or numerically evaluate the strength of CTB with different components (e.g., mixture of cement, tailings, fly ash, blast furnace slag, etc.) to ensure the geological stability when extracting adjacent stopes. After extracting ore from stopes, CTB is filled in the gob, stress redistribution occurs in the backfill stope and surrounding rocks. Due to the elasticity mismatch of these two kinds of material, differential de-formation occurs and they both resist the overburden pressure and deformation. As a result, the interactions between the surrounding rock and tailing backfill material have significant role in maintaining the long-term stability of mine stopes. Apart from the investigations on the static mechanical behaviors of rock- backfill composited backfill (RBCS) material, the RBCS in the stope are also exposed to disturbed stress (e.g., blast vibration, excavation, earthquake, etc.), and the disturbed stress is usually equivalent to cyclic or fatigue loads. As a result, investigations on rock-backfill interactions subjected to the disturbed stress are critical and significant to maintain the long- term stability of mine stopes.