Effect of Thick–Hard Main Roof Fracturing on the Spatiotemporal Evolution of Overburden Fractures

Gas gushing and the co-mining of coal and gas outbursts are common disasters in coal mines. The weakening of thick–hard main roof fracturing can effectively alleviate the gas overrun in the initial mining stage. Four numerical simulation schemes were designed to determine the optimal fracturing treatment scheme for the gas overrun problem in the initial mining stage of the 6505# working face in the Huanghou Coal Mine. Compared with the scheme of the non-fracturing main roof, the weakening of the main roof fracturing could alleviate the concentration of advanced abutment stress. The fissure ratio of the overburden was solved by the binary method, and the dominant channels of gas migration and their morphological evolution under different fracturing schemes were obtained. On this basis, the permeability model of “permeability–fissure ratio–fractal dimension” was established. The results show that the overburden fracture network of the horizontal fracturing scheme has a larger fractal dimension, indicating that the overburden fracture under the scheme is more fully developed and more conducive to gas migration. The research results provide valuable reference for the design of the gas extraction scheme.