In order to further investigate the impacts of the water environment on the mechanical properties of rocks for an engineering project, taking the water-rich conditions in a coal mine as the engineering background, a series of tests were conducted, including the uniaxial compression test, the conventional triaxial compression test, and the constant axial pressure test on the cementitious sandstone. This was conducted along with the establishment of a multi-linear strain softening constitutive model. According to the tests, the following conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, as the water content increases, the weakening effect of water on the rock mass was obvious. Under various stress paths, the water weakened the rock body to various degrees. In other words, the weakening effect of water on the rock mass was either inhibited or promoted under different stress path conditions Secondly, under various stress paths, the turning point strength and strength variance rate of the rock mass’ mechanical properties decreased linearly with the increase of water content. This further proves that water has a weakening effect on the rock mass, showing that the failure of the specimen changes from brittleness to ductility. Thirdly, the test sample demonstrated different types of damages including the tensile failure, transformation from tensile-shear composite failure to shear failure, and expansion failure under three stress path conditions. In addition, the unloading process demonstrated some dynamic failure characteristics. The research aims to provide some foundational insights for the scientific design and safe construction of the mine and other underground engineering, especially rock mass engineering in the multi-water environment.

A large amount of data would be generated during the process of microseismic monitoring, and data transmission with the cable has some shortcomings such as poor anti-interference, time-consuming, laborious, high cost, and low construction efficiency. On the other hand, the influence of signal diffraction and the multipath effect will greatly cut down the energy of the signal during the wireless transmission in the complex mountainous area. The wireless transmission system based on Wi-Fi is designed in this paper, which includes the base station and data transceiver. The maximum distance and transmission rate at point-to-point communication of the base station are up to 1000 m and 150 Mbps, respectively, and it provides the communication backbone line for the network. The data transceiver adopts the network protocol based on Ad Hoc, and the transmission distance is up to 200 m at the condition of complex topography and lush mountains. We have applied the system to in-site microseismic monitoring with 28 geophones of the coalbed methane fracturing in South Chongqing. It achieved a good performance with a transmission rate of 1.2 Mbps, a time delay of 1.95 ms, and a signal strength of up to −52.3 dBm for real-time data transmission in the field. The results show that the system has the advantages of low BER, fast transmission speed, long communication distance, and stable and safety hardware and has a great value for more applications of microseismicity in complex topography.

Based on the governing equations of the electromagnetic radiation field and the theory of multi-layer media propagation, the governing equations for electromagnetic wave attenuation are derived. A stable solution to the resulting large-scale sparse linear system is obtained using Tikhonov regularization. A typical collapse column forward model is established using locally refined triangular mesh discretization. Forward and inverse modeling are conducted at three transmission frequencies: 0.3 MHz, 0.5 MHz, and 1.5 MHz. The results indicate that the 1.5 MHz frequency yields the best vertical resolution, with inversion results most closely matching the modeled anomaly location. In the field application at working face number 3308 using 1.5 MHz, the local polynomial interpolation inversion delineates an anomalous vertical extent of approximately 70 m (75–145 m), whereas the Kriging interpolation method yields a vertical extent of about 140 m (20–160 m), representing a reduction of approximately 50% in the vertical extent of the delineated anomaly. Post-mining exposure reveals the X16 collapse column, with a major axis of 53 m and a minor axis of 34 m, which is generally consistent with the detection results. This study confirms that local polynomial interpolation combined with locally refined triangular meshing effectively enhances the vertical resolution of radio wave transillumination, providing reliable technical support for the accurate delineation of concealed collapse columns.

During coal mining, detecting subsurface structures (such as faults, voids, collapse columns, etc.) using radio waves in existing mines is hindered by the absence of effective three-dimensional coal seam medium models and simulation methods, adversely affecting the forward modeling of data analysis. This study establishes a Three-Dimensional Finite-Difference Time-Domain (3D-FDTD) radio wave penetration medium model based on coal seam tunnel penetration working conditions to simulate the electric field intensity characteristics of longitudinal and transverse waves in various coal rock mediums. Firstly, a higher-order finite difference method based on Maxwell’s equations is employed to analyze the electric field characteristics of gas-enriched areas under various geological conditions, enabling the exploration of the relationship between the position and size of the electromagnetic wave field strength in different areas. The electromagnetic wave field strength response data are then analyzed during the actual detection process to determine the specific location, shape, and size of the abnormal area. Finally, by comparing the simulation results with an actual engineering project, electromagnetic wave field strength attenuation data were collected from 158 measuring points at a working face of a coal mine in Anhui. The detection results clearly illustrate the changes in electric field intensity (with attenuation coefficients ranging from 0.41 to 0.77 dB/m) in anomalous areas, enabling the forward simulation to accurately determine the position and size of faults. The novelty of this study lies in the establishment of a conductivity-weighted 3D-FDTD model specifically calibrated for complex coal seam environments, which significantly improves the accuracy of fault boundary detection compared to traditional linear inversion methods.