Deep borehole cores are an important material basis for understanding deep stress conditions and rockburst risk; however, the complex environment of deep boreholes poses many challenges to traditional core orientation techniques, thus limiting the application of cores in fields such as in situ stress measurement. A technical method of restoring the original spatial attitude of nonoriented geological cores on the ground was proposed based on the inherent “trajectory projection consistency” relationship between the borehole and the corresponding core. A prototype machine of core ground reorientation was developed. Using this method and machine, ground reorientation was performed on cores drilled from the deepest shaft in China. Subsequently, the reoriented core acoustic emission (AE) method was conducted to identify the in situ stress within the project area. Meanwhile, measurement accuracy was verified by the stress relief method. The results show that the in situ stress distributions, including the azimuth and the trends in principal stresses by the two methods, are in good agreement and indicate that the historical maximum principal stress in the case of the mine has little abrupt variability with that of the present day. The research results can be used as the design basis for the safe construction of the deepest shaft.

As mining progresses to depth, engineering activities face the extreme challenge of high in situ stress. To efficiently measure the deep in situ stress before engineering excavation, an innovative deep in situ stress measurement method capable of the geological core ground reorientation technology and acoustic emission (AE) technology was proposed. With this method, nonorientation geological cores collected from the thousand‐meter‐deep borehole were reoriented based on the spatial spherical geometry model and borehole bending measurement principle. The distribution of deep in situ stress of an over‐kilometer‐deep shaft in the Xiangxi gold mine was investigated with real‐time synchronized MTS 815 material testing machine and PCI‐II AE instrument. The results show that the in situ stress changes from being dominated by horizontal stress to being dominated by vertical stress with depth. The horizontal maximum principal stress and vertical stress gradually increase with depth and reach a high‐stress level (greater than 25 MPa) at a depth of 1000 m. The direction of the maximum principal stress is near the north. Meanwhile, to analyze the accuracy of the measured in situ stress comparatively, the stress relief measurements were performed at a depth of 655–958 m in the mine, using the Swedish LUT rock triaxial in situ stress measurement system. The distribution of deep in situ stress obtained by the stress relief method agrees well with that by the AE method, which proves the reliability of the AE in situ stress testing method based on the geological core ground reorientation technology.