Effects of water saturation time on energy dissipation and burst propensity of coal specimens

Water infusion has long been taken as an effective way to eliminate coal burst risk as coal properties can be loosen and soften by water infusion. However, not all industrial trials of water infusion for coal burst prevention have been necessarily effective in all situations as the effectiveness of this method can be affected by water infusion time, coal properties and the parameters of water injection. Hence, some fundamental issues including the effects of water infusion time on burst propensity and energy evolution need to be further discussed. In this paper, four groups of coal specimens with 0 day, 5 days, 10 days, and 15 days water saturation time are tested under uniaxial compression load with the application of AE monitoring. To comprehensively compare the burst behavior of coal specimens under different water saturation time, stress-strain curves, AE counts, fragmentation characteristics and burst propensity of these groups are analyzed. It was found by this research that sufficient water saturation can mitigate the burst behavior of coal samples while insufficient water infusion might cannot reach the burst mitigation aims.