Abstract
The article presents a new geotechnical approach and a concept of an alternative convergent geotechnology for rock salt mining, which are based on the change of the mining front advance, namely, on the transition from horizontal stopes to ascending or descending vertical cylindrical stopes created by drilling. The rib pillar stability is calculated using the Turner–Shevyakov hypothesis for the conventional room-and-pillar mining and for the vertical cylindrical stopes with rib pillars with their corners cut off by circles. The analytical calculation procedure is developed for determining stability of structural elements in honeycomb mines, and the limitation conditions are defined for the Shevaykov method in case of the conventional and new-structure mines. The authors describe a variant of the stress–strain modeling in rib pillars with their corners cut off by vertical cylindrical stopes arranged in triangular patterns for the honeycomb structure mine at the depth of 1000 m. The procedure should further be adapted for the calculations of rib pillar parameters for honeycomb mines under different variants of the natural stress field: gravitational, lithostatic and gravitational–tectonic.