Abstract: Gaotouyao Mine Area, located in the Shendong Coal Field, has typical topography features of developmental gully and large change for the slopes, thence many accidents, such as roof slice type caving and hydraulic support being iron-bound, are inclined to happen during the longwall mining of the shallow coal seams beneath the gully topography. According to the field conditions of the first longwall panel, Selian No. 1 Coal Mine, a “support-surrounding rock” relationship model has been established, and the reasonable support working resistance has been determined to be 11 000 kN in the back-gully mining period. The coal wall plastic zone development, roof pressure and roof deflection have been analyzed while the mining height are 4.0 m and 3.2 m respectively. And the strata pressure behavior degree presents a characteristic of “back-gully mining period > toward-gully mining period > bottom-gully mining period > normal mining period”. The real-time monitoring results indicate that the max support working resistance and the roof weighting dynamic factor of the gully period are larger than these of the normal mining period. Many roof control measures, including enhancement mine pressure monitoring and forecasting, regional lower mining height and rapid advance speed, are implemented in the field, hence safe and efficient mining of shallow seam beneath the gully topography has been guaranteed.

Key words: shallow coal seams, gully topography, support working resistance, dynamic mine pressure, safe and efficient mining