Ground movements caused by deep underground mining in Guan-Zhuang iron mine, Luzhong, China

It is difficult to calculate the accurate ground movement due to deep underground mining because of the complexity of the geotechnical environment. Guan-Zhuang iron mine is a pillarless sublevel caving mine operated by Luzhong Metallurgical Mining Company, south-east of Jinan, PR China. It mines the Zhangjiawa Seam at a depth of approximately 520 m. Although the towers are outside the conventional ‘angle of draw’ subsidence influence criteria, and have seen only negligible vertical displacement as a result of deep mining, there has been widespread evidence of regional horizontal displacement of the land surface, large distances away from the mining area. Possible explanations of these displacements include one or a combination of mechanisms such as pre-mining stress relaxation, regional joint patterns, soft rock strata, displacement toward active goaf areas. Luzhong Metallurgical Mining Company have been making precise measurements of distances near the shaft towers in the Guan-Zhuang iron mine since 2003. The results show horizontal displacements of up to 96 mm occur even when underground mining is about 0.8 km from the survey displacements. From an analysis of these and other survey results it is concluded that mining effects extend a long way from deep mining. The results also show that ground horizontal displacements are typically at least as great as the vertical component, that the maximum horizontal displacement occurs soon after undermining.