Experimental Study on Deformation Characteristics of Gangue Backfill Zone under the Condition of Natural Water in Deep Mines

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study of this paper can be interesting to the readers, and the manuscript is well organized, but there are some problems need to be solved. The problems are as follows:

1.It is suggested that the title of the article should be changed to“Experimental study on deformation characteristics of gangue backfill zone under the condition of natural water in deep mines”. Because the research object is not the deformation characteristic of the filled gangue, but the deformation characteristic of the ganggue backfill zone.

2.The selected keywords do not meet the requirements, the suggested keywords are: mining subsidence control; backfill mining; gangue backfill zone; deformation characteristics.

3.In the introduction, the present status of the researches is not fully discussed. The results of previous studies are not fully discussed, and it is not pointed out what problems have been solved and what deficiencies still exist in the previous researches.

4.In “1.2.Test design”, the settings of the loading parameters should be demonstrated and explained.

5.The“gradient loading” should be applied in the research of this paper, not the“graded loading”. The word "graded loading" appears in several places in the manuscript and should be changed to "gradient loading".

6.In some figures and tables the units are written as “MJ · m -3”, where”-3” should be superscript.

7.Line 305: “Note: Green stands for natural state, brown stands for water-bearing state, E-d stands for energy dissipation.”, What is green, and what is brown?

8.Line 120: “Fig. 3.” should be “Figure 3”. Line 144: “Fig.4(a)” should be “Figure 4(a)”. Line 145: “Figs. 4(b)~(e)” should be “Figure 4(b)~(e)”.

9.The accuracy of English expression needs to be improved.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I am happy that I had the opportunity to read this manuscript. Herein, for the filling gangue’s deformation of goaf in the real environment, the author conducted an indoor simulation test to obtain the conclusion of filling coal mines. The conducted research seems meaningful to me. However, to ensure the rationality of the test results, the authors need to answer the following questions for further potential processing of the manuscript.

1. Is the size of the equipment used by the author reasonable? and does the loading limit meet the requirements of the field stress?

2. Principles of determining the particle size and grading of filling gangue should be clarified.

3. Can the test equipment maintain the water pressure? And what is the purpose of adding water?

4. How do the results obtained from the experiment guide the field practice and contribute to a better engineering task?

5. The authors considered the factor of water filling in the mined area, and carried out two sets of comparison tests between the natural state and water filling state. After reading the manuscript I still did not understand whether the height of the water filling and other factors were considered as well.

6. Deep learning and intelligent detection and recognition of coal gangue have been the core concept of intelligent coal mining in recent years. Considering the movement of the coal industry in this direction in the recent years, the literature review would be further enriched by the studies on the subject including but not limited to https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9433566/, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2022.111415, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2021.122599

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The objective of this paper is studying the deformation characteristics of filling gangue under natural-water condition in deep mines.

The is an interesting and paper, including the necessary sections (Introduction, Test method, Test results, Discussion and Conclusions). Moreover, “Test method” is divided into three sub-sections, providing additional details, while the “Test results” are separately analyzed both for “Compaction test under natural condition” and “Compaction test in a saturated state”, respectively. Regarding the mathematical part, presented in the “Energy dissipation of the filling gangue” sections, all equations are valid and described properly. Furthermore, Figures and Tables are consistent with the analysis, described in the text. However, some changes should be performed, which will overall improve the paper:

Line 62: Please, provide a detailed description in the Figure 1 caption.

Lines 71-85: This part includes additional information, making it difficult to comprehend the paper objectives. Moreover, some sentences are quite long, while they should be rephrased. Please, apply.

Line 86: Before the “Test method” section, I suggest adding a new, brief section, entitled “Geology of the study area”, describing the geological formations, on which the test methods were implemented. Some typical papers, related to coal mining, which can optionally be cited are: 1. Chi, M., Li, Q., Cao, Z., Fang, J., Wu, B., Zhang, Y., Wei, S., Liu, X., & Yang, Y. (2022). Evaluation of water resources carrying capacity in ecologically fragile mining areas under the influence of underground reservoirs in coal mines. Journal of Cleaner Production, 379, 134449. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.134449, 2. Karagianni, A., Lazos, I., & Chatzipetros, A. (2019). Remote Sensing Techniques in Disaster Management: Amynteon Mine Landslides, Greece. In Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05330-7_9, 3. Murali, S., Asokan, P., & Morchhale, R. K. (2021). High volume fly ash utilization for reclamation of wastelands with special reference to mine spoil and ash back-haul areas for agriculture and forestry (pp. 243–263). https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-823895-0.00029-4, 4. Saha, L., & Bauddh, K. (2021). Characteristics of mining spoiled and oil drilling sites and adverse impacts of these activities on the environment and human health. In Phytorestoration of Abandoned Mining and Oil Drilling Sites (pp. 87–101). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-821200-4.00020-0, 5. Ward, C. R., & Suárez-Ruiz, I. (2008). Introduction to Applied Coal Petrology. In Applied Coal Petrology (pp. 1–18). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-045051-3.00001-4. Please, apply.

Lines 162: Please, increase the resolution of Figure 4; some parts are blur.

Line 247: Please, provide a brief comment for each diagram (a, b, c, d and e).

Line 326: The “Discussion” section should be modified, as it resembles the “Conclusions” section in its current form. In this section, an analytical description of the results should be provided, as well as a comparison with the findings of previous research results. Please, apply.

Line 344: Numbering of the concluding remarks is a proper way of presentation. However, before numbering a brief paragraph should be added, summarizing all paper steps, which resulted in these conclusions. Please, apply.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The presented article is very interesting. First of all, I do not understand why the original version of the article v1 is stylistically modified and reformatted, and v2 is, in my opinion, in its original state. The article contains a detailed description of the conditions under which the measurements were applied.

1. I miss more colorful visual documentation of the described phenomena. Since it is not possible, in my opinion, to create photo documentation of ongoing tests, I would appreciate a photo of the tested sample before and after the tests. The processes are sufficiently described, as are the graphs.

2. As for the literature, I think it is focused on the domestic location. I would be interested in comparing the issue you are studying with a similar or identical issue, for example, in Europe (for example, in Germany, ...).

3. The conclusion is an evaluation of the experimental study. Do the authors also have any evaluation regarding the assumptions of the behavior of backfill tailings in real conditions based on the results of these measurements?

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed the comments and have updated the text as well.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your acknowledgements.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf