The problem of roadway support in swelling soft rock was one of the challenging problems during mining. For most geological conditions, combinations of two or more supporting approaches could meet the requirements of most roadways; however, in extremely swelling soft rock, combined approaches even could not control large deformations. The purpose of this work was to probe the roadway deformation mechanisms in extremely swelling soft rock. Based on the main return air-way in a coal mine, deformation monitoring and geomechanical analysis were conducted, as well as plastic zone mechanical model was analysed. Results indicated that this soft rock was potentially very swelling. When the ground stress acted alone, the support strength needed in situ was not too large and combined supporting approaches could meet this requirement; however, when this potential released, the roadway would undergo permanent deformation. When the loose zone reached 3 m within surrounding rock, remote stress p ∞ and supporting stress P presented a linear relationship. Namely, the greater the swelling stress, the more difficult it would be in roadway supporting. So in this extremely swelling soft rock, a better way to control roadway deformation was to control the releasing of surrounding rock’s swelling potential.

There is high demand for roadway support in coal mines for the swelling soft rocks. As high strength steel sets can be taken as an effective alternative to control large deformation in this type of rocks, based on an original set, three new sets, including a floor beam set, a roof and floor beams set, and a roof and floor beams and braces set, are proposed in this research. In order to examine the strengths of new sets, four scaled sets of one original set, and three new sets, have been manufactured and tested in loading experiments. Results indicated that three new sets all exhibited higher strength than the original set. In experiments, the roof beam in set plays a significant effect on top arch strengthening, while the floor beam plays significant effect on bottom arch strengthening. The maximum bearing capacity and stiffness of the top arch with roof beam are increased to 1.63 times and 3.06 times of those in the original set, and the maximum bearing capacity and stiffness of the bottom arch with floor beam are increased to 1.44 times and 3.55 times of those in original set. Based on the roof and floor beams, two more braces in the bottom arch also play a significant effect in bottom corners strengthening, but extra braces play little role in top arch strengthening. These new sets provide more choices for roadway support in swelling soft rocks.

The left-hand rolling-thread steel bolt has been proposed as a new bolt for controlling roadway surrounding rock. To explore the mechanism of a left-hand rolling-thread steel bolt in roadway surrounding rock control, its pretightening forces, tensile strengths, anchoring forces, and maximum working resistances were compared to normal right-hand full-thread steel bolts in the engineering context of the 1301 haulage roadway in the Daxing Coal Mine. Then, the left-hand threaded steel bolt was applied to the 1301 haulage roadway that the right-hand threaded steel bolt failed to control. The results indicated that due to the different effective tensile section area, the yield strength and tensile strength of the left-hand threaded steel bolt with the same material and diameter were more than 10% larger than those of the right-hand threaded steel bolt. Due to the different thread directions, the anchoring forces of the Φ18 and Φ20 left-hand threaded steel bolts were 46.2% and 33.3% greater than those of the right-hand threaded steel bolts, respectively. In the 1301 haulage roadway, the maximum pull-out force of the left-hand rolling-thread steel bolt with the same diameter was obviously greater than that of the right-hand full thread steel bolt. The displacements of the 1301 haulage roadway supported by the left-hand threaded steel bolt were not great. So, the left-hand threaded steel bolt can effectively control the surrounding rock in the 1301 haulage roadway.

The surrounding rock control is a tough issue in the roadway with the swelling soft rock. The steel set is an important material for the control of swelling soft rock roadways. However, traditional steel sets failed to prevent the expansive pressure of the soft rock. Based on traditional steel sets, this paper developed a new steel set through both theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. The results showed that the new steel set was the set with the roof beam 1000 mm from the top of the set and the floor beam 400 mm from the bottom end of the set. The maximum deformations of the roof-floor and two sides of the ventilation roadway controlled by the best-improved set at the observation point were 147 mm and 108 mm, respectively. So, the best-improved set can effectively control the surrounding rock of the ventilation roadway. This provides an effective method for the surrounding rock control in extremely soft rock roadways.

In mine roadway support operations, floor bolting not only played a role in floor heave control, but also in reinforcing roof and its two sides. Correspondingly, bolting of roof and two sides also played a part in floor heave control. To quantify the effect of such bolting, based on roadway support in extremely weak rock, three physical models were produced and tested in laboratory. Through comparison of their displacements in three physical simulation experiments, the reinforcing effect of bolting in extremely weak rock roadways was quantified. Reinforcing coefficients was defined as displacement ratio between original support and new support regime. Results indicated that the reinforcing coefficients, for bolting of roof and its two sides, on floor, two sides, and roof reached 2.18, 3.56, and 1.81 respectively. The reinforcing coefficients for floor bolting on floor, two sides, and roof reached 3.06, 2.34, and 1.39 respectively. So in this extremely weak rock, the surrounding rock should be considered as an integral structure in any support operation: this allows for better local strength improvement, and provided future design guidance.

Reasonable coal pillar size of roadway protection is an important guarantee for roadway stability under the action of static-dynamic coupling loadings in deep mines. Coal pillar and roof-floor rock form a non-integral contact structure of coal and rock. However, in the existing literature, there is no research on the size of the coal pillar under static-dynamic coupling loadings based on the non-integral contact structure of coal and rock. In this study, the coal-rock non-integral contact composite specimens are designed, and the coal pillar size is simulated by the radial sizes of the specimens. The failure characteristics of coal-rock under the static-dynamic coupling loadings are studied by the SHPB test, which provides the basis for the design of coal pillar size, and finally determines the reasonable coal pillar size by combining with numerical simulation. The test results show that the strength of the specimens decreases with the decrease of section size of coal and increases with the increase of dynamic load, but there is a critical value for static load. When the coal sections radial sizes are 50, 45, and 40 mm and dynamic loads are applied, the stress-strain curve of the specimens has a plastic stage, but the rest do not exist. The minimum coal section radial size which can ensure the stability of the specimens is 40 mm, and the similar calculation of coal pillar size is 88 m. Combined with numerical simulation, the final coal pillar size is 90 m. This study provides a more accurate and reliable method to determine the size of a coal pillar under the action of static-dynamic coupling loadings.