Evaluation Of Best-Fit Failure Criteria For Talcher Area

Abstract

Mining sector has always been a driving force in country’s growth. Thermal energy is generated using coal as major raw material which has to be mined and handled before it could be used for power generation or in other industries. Extraction of mineral wealth from underground sources is filled with many uncertainties, rock characteristics is one of those. It is essential to predict the strength of rocks underlying and overlaying the coal so that safe mine could be designed. Various failure criteria have been developed to predict the nature of rock mass failure and its behavior. No failure criteria has been as yet designed specifically for Talcher area. Using the four existing failure criteria and six bore holes’ data, a failure criteria has been developed for Talcher area. Mohr coulomb failure criteria proves to be least acceptable to predict the behavior of Talcher rock mass. Hoek Brown failure criteria, Yudhbir failure criteria and Ramamurthy failure criteria show promising results when analyzed with the actual data. Out of the four criteria, Ramamurthy failure criteria gives the least error in actual verses predicted values. The student t test also showed that it is acceptable.