Ground support for underground mines / Крепление подземных горных выработок

Ground support has been used to stabilise underground excavations in rock since Roman times. In a review of the evolution of ground support and reinforcement, Brown (1999) refers to De Re Metallica (Agricola 1556), which describes timbering in shafts, tunnels and drifts used as a means of protection against collapse and risk of injury. Stabilisation of the immediate boundary of a rock mass surrounding an excavation is often referred to as ‘local support’. Until the 1950s, timbering remained one of the main means of local support. Since then, it has gradually been replaced by internal reinforcement techniques, such as dowels installed inside a drilled hole.
Advances in ground support techniques, critical to both safety and economic success in modem mining, have gathered pace since the 1980s. The terminology associated with ground support has also evolved (Brady & Brown 2006). Although there are few universally accepted definitions, it is convenient to distinguish between support and reinforcement, as put forward by Windsor and Thompson (1993): “Support is the application of a reactive force at the face of the excavation.”
And... “Reinforcement is considered to be an improvement of the overall rock mass properties from within the rock mass and will therefore include all devices installed in boreholes.”
The application of both surface support and reinforcement to stabilise an excavation in rock constitutes the ground support system.
Surface support is generally installed on the surface of excavations (roofs and walls) to catch rock material that may detach from the boundary, hence maintaining its integrity and limiting deformation or ‘bulking’ of the surface. The timbering described in Agricola (1556), as well as in early mining textbooks such as Peele (1941), was in fact a form of surface support. In modern mining, mesh and shotcrete have replaced timbering.
In this book, the term ‘ground support’ is used to refer to both surface support and reinforcement. <...>