Assessment of the Importance of Parameters Affecting Roof Strata Cavability in Mechanized Longwall Mining

This paper was assesses the cavability of roof strata in mechanized longwall coal mining in terms of their principle parameters. For this purpose, the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method was employed to study and analysis the influencing parameters and interrelationships among them. Since this method is based on the survey of experts to indicate the influences and involves uncertainty, therefore, the fuzzy coding was used. Given that the behavior of roof strata in the caving process is controlled by many factors, seventeen effective parameters in five categories were recognized. As a result of analysis, the parameters with the highest exerted and received influence were introduced. Besides, the impact and relation of factors in the cavability system were determined. After that, an approach was proposed for weighting the parameters in the fuzzy DEMATEL framework and then the importance of significant parameters were assessed. The conducted method provides a systematic approach for holistic analysis the principles parameters affecting the cavability of immediate roof strata in mechanized longwall coal mining and hence, is worthwhile for studying this complex and dynamic problem under uncertainty.