Abstract:
When designing coal mine roof support, it is necessary to account for the uncertainties and variability that inherently exist within the
rock mass and support elements. The performance of a support system is affected by these uncertainties, which are not taken into account in the current deterministic design methodologies used in South Africa. The key to the design of a roof support system is a better understanding of roof behaviour and uncertainties that can be
encountered during extraction. This paper sets out to develop a method that takes all uncertainties that exist within the rock mass
and the mining process into account and provides a quantitative risk-based design methodology.
