ABSTRACT
Thick coal seams could fundamentally be mined out by working either full face or individual slices. The slice, as an extraction structure, divides a thick coal seam into sections which, as a unit, make coal mining easy and convenient. The technology of longwalling of thick coal seams follows the panel slice extraction, similar to panel extraction of a single slice. The division of a thick coal seam, on the basis of the principal structure could be a single slice, which offers partial or total seam extraction, or by multiple slices. Simultaneous, or multi slice, systems exhibit parallel faces following one another at close spacings and they represent some variations of full face mining of thick coal seams but without implementing the single pass method. Coal falls and rock falls in working areas of the thick coal seams, particularly in the case of slice mining, might also be due to the influence of geological factors.
