Summary: | Retained gob-side entry (RGE) is a significant improvement for fully-mechanized longwall mining. The environment of surrounding rock directly affects its stability. Roadside backfilling body (RBB), a man-made structure in RGE plays the most important role in successful application of the technology. In the field, however, the vertical deformation of RBB is large during the panel extraction, which leads to malfunction of the RGE. In order to solve the problem, roof pre-split is employed. According to geological conditions as well as the physical modeling of roof behavior and deformation of surrounding rock, the support resistance of RBB is calculated. The environment of surrounding rock, vertical stress and vertical deformation of the RBB in the RGE with different roof pre-split angles are analyzed using FLAC<sup>3D</sup> software. With the increase of roof pre-split angle, the vertical stresses both in the coal wall and RBB are minimum, and the vertical deformation of RBB also decreases from 110.51 mm to 6.1 mm. Therefore, based on the results of numerical modeling and field observation, roof pre-split angle of 90° is more beneficial to the maintenance of the RGE.
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