Comparing control methods of water inrush disaster using mathematical programming: modelling, analysis and a case study

Water inrush from coal floor is one of the main disasters in underground coal mining operations. When establishing or selecting control methods, various factors, such as cost, risk and operability, should be taken into consideration. However, due to the lack of effective mathematical models, the selecting process in practice relies solely on engineering experiences, which may not lead to an optimal and effective decision. This paper proposes a method that considers the parameters, variables, and constraints in water inrush control and it adopts economic factors as the objective function to construct a multi-objective optimization model. Using this method, one can not only rank different control measures but also obtain a preferred control effect level, which is a trade-off between efficiency and economy. A case study is used to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach.