ABSTRACT
Highwall mining system is to extract coal with an auger machine or a continuous miner. With the highwall mining system, there are many factors that have to be considered. Major factors are the coal recovery and the stability of the highwall. A large amount of coal remains isolated and undeveloped as pillars due to previous indiscriminate mining operations performed by the use of an auger or a continuous miner. Therefore, highwall mining may cause the highwall instability and also remain a precious coal reserve undeveloped as pillars. Backfilling in the highwall mining would allow for a high coal extraction ratio while greatly reducing the threat of failure of the pillars and highwall and damage caused by subsidence at the surface.
This paper describes the highwall mining system and the importance of the backfilling system in highwall mining and discusses the geotechnical and mining problems in highwall mining system by means of the non-linear finite element method.
