Slope Stability Assessment and Underground Mine Design Analysis of Achibo-Sombo Underground Conventional Coal Mine, Southwest Ethiopia

Department of Earth Science, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, P.O.Box.3066, Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia

^* Corresponding author: asmelashby@yahoo.com

Abstract

We report the slope stability assessment and underground mine design analysis results for the first of its kind conventional Achibo-Sombo underground coal mine from Ethiopia. Based on the RQD, RMR and Q classification system, the rocks in the mine are of poor to fair rock quality and are classified into category I (<10 MPa), category II (10-25 MPa), and category III (>25 MPa). Joint space and aperture are ranging from few mm to cm with E-W, NNW-SSE and N-S orientations and low to very low persistence from 50 cm to 2 m. The factor of safety calculated using CMRI, Salamon-Munro, Greenwald, Obert and Duvall, and Bieniawsk methods for the existing pillars for category I is 1.37, 4.39, 2.21, 3.58, 4.76; category II 2.25, 4.39, 7.76, 12.52, 16.72; and category III 3.21, 4.39, 13.72, 22.26, 29.58 respectively. The factor of safety calculated again for the newly proposed design using the same methods is 1.05, 3.83, 1.91, 2.99, 3.8 for category I; 1.65, 3.17, 5.48, 8.55, 10.02 for category II and 2.20, 2.63, 7.91, 8.26, 14.25 for category III respectively. The extraction percentage has increased from 24.2 % (for the existing) to 31%, 41% and 52% for I, II and III categories respectively.