Geomechanical Justification of Ground Control Method Using Pillars and Roof Caving in Mining Inclined Thin and Medium-Thick Orebodies

The authors design and estimate a room-and-pillar method for mining inclined orebodies with combination of two approaches to ground control: through natural stability of rock mass and by means of overlying rock caving. It is shown that in rock mass under tectonic stresses, it is safe to extract ore reserves from rooms and from temporal ore pillar under protection of rock overhang. Due to inclination of an ore body, rocks in the pillar and in the block bottom fail mostly by way of shearing. The efficient ratios of a minimal width of a temporal ore pillar to a span of a stope are determined.