A Novel Approach for Predicting Mining Subsidence in Near‐Horizontal Coal Seams by Coupling Key Stratum and Stochastic Medium Theories

With the increasing scale and intensity of coal mining, the subsidence range of the goaf continues to expand, seriously affecting the stability of surface buildings and restricting the ecological environment protection of mining areas. To enrich the discipline system of mining subsidence and improve prediction accuracy, this study clarifies the mechanical relationship between the movement of the primary key stratum and surface subsidence. The method integrates key stratum theory with stochastic medium theory. The coupling prediction method of surface subsidence is constructed, and its reliability is verified by the working face of the Bulianta 31401 measured data. This paper constructs a coupled prediction method for surface subsidence and verifies its reliability through measured data. The results indicate that the coupled method achieves high accuracy, with a mean absolute error of 0.09 m and a mean relative error of 7.58%. The coupling prediction method is superior to the probability integration method. The surface subsidence morphology of the prediction results changes with the breaking and subsidence of the primary key stratum. The coupling prediction method addresses the issues of oversized subcritical mining prediction results and the rapid convergence of subsidence edge prediction results in the probability integration method.