Dragline Bench Stability in Open Cut Coal Mining

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Dragline bench; Coal mining; Strip mining

Abstract

Strip mining by draglines is typically used in shallow-bedded coal deposits to remove waste rock and uncover coal seams. Draglines work by sitting on the blasted overburden and side casting the spoil into the previous strip as it advances along the strike. The main form of dragline bench instability occurs during the key cut, with the main risk factors being the dip angle and direction of the coal seam, the presence of weak layers within, above, or below the coal, the presence of water, unfavourably oriented faults, and the strengths of the spoil and the weak layers.

The failure typically projects up from the coal seam at about 60° and fails in a two-wedge mechanism, like that observed in lowwall instabilities. The stability of a dragline bench is also heavily influenced by the sequencing, which can significantly vary depending on the mining operation, as well as operational factors such as water management and dragline positioning. This makes the assessment of dragline bench stability a unique and interesting problem that blends both geotechnical and mining engineering.

This paper explores the geotechnical and operational constraints that affect and ultimately control dragline bench stability and aims to serve as a guideline for practising geotechnical and dragline engineers.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jiwoo Ahn
AU  - Kathryn Young
AU  - Jianping Li
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/07
TI  - Dragline Bench Stability in Open Cut Coal Mining
BT  - Proceedings of the Rocscience International Conference 2025 (RIC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 28
EP  - 37
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_4
ID  - Ahn2025
ER  -