Predicting destabilisation precursor phenomena in low-strength molybdenum ore during destruction: insights based on critical slowing down and cusp catastrophe theory

Deep mining of molybdenum mines faces the challenge of supporting low-strength surrounding rock, which is prone to structural damage and roadway collapse. To address this, this paper constructs a dual warning model for instability damage of low-strength molybdenum ore rock (LSMO) based on critical slowing down (CSD) and cusp mutation (CC) theories. Through uniaxial compression and simultaneous acoustic emission testing, combined with the evolution of RA/AF values and releasable elastic strain energy, the LSMO damage process is divided into four stages: compression density, nonlinear deformation, linear deformation, and post-peak damage. Among them, changes in RA/AF values effectively characterize the damage evolution process of LSMO. In the CSD model, the instability warning interval corresponds to the period where variance and autocorrelation coefficient curves shift from relative stability to a sharp increase before reaching the peak. In the CC model, the warning interval is defined by the abrupt change near the extreme point of the bifurcation set function. The warning intervals derived from both models are highly consistent and validate each other, confirming their predictive accuracy and reliability. This study provides a new method and perspective for early warning of brittle failure in low-strength molybdenum ore surrounding rocks.