Roof bolting is the most popular method for underground openings in the mining industry, especially in the bedded deposits such as coal, potash, salt etc. In fact, all U.S. underground coal mine entries are roof-bolted as required by law. However, roof falls still occur frequently in the roof bolted entries. The two possible reasons are: the lack of knowledge of and technology to detect the roof geological conditions in advance of mining, and lack of roof bolting design criteria for modern roof bolting systems. This research is to develop a method for predicting the roof geology and stability condition in real time during roof bolting operation. Based on such information, roof bolting design criteria for modern roof bolting systems will be developed for implementation in real time. The retrofitting works for a dedicated roof bolter for this research has been completed. The laboratory tests performed using this machine on simulated roof blocks have been conducted. The analysis performed on the testing data showed promising signs to detect the rock interface, fractures, as well as the rock types. The other tasks were progressing as planned.

In this quarter, the research effort is to develop the drill control unit (DCU) that acquire, store drilling parameters and control the drilling operation. The relevant publications have been reviewed and the methodology developed by previous researchers has been evaluated using the collected data in our laboratory and field tests conducted prior to the start of this project. Numerical modeling for exploring roof bolting mechanism has been started.

Roof bolting is the most popular method for underground openings in the mining industry, especially in the bedded deposits such as coal, potash, salt etc. In fact, all U.S. underground coal mine entries are roof-bolted as required by law. However, roof falls still occur frequently in the roof bolted entries. The two possible reasons are: the lack of knowledge of and technology to detect the roof geological conditions in advance of mining, and lack of roof bolting design criteria for modern roof bolting systems. This research is to develop a method for predicting the roof geology and stability condition in real time during roof bolting operation. Based on such information, roof bolting design criteria for modern roof bolting systems will be developed for implementation in real time. In this quarter, retrofitting work to build a dedicated roof bolter for this research has been started. A number of numerical methods have been developed to improve the quality of and to analyze the collected drilling parameters. Finite element modeling of roof bolting mechanism is continuing.