**Author details**

Peter K. Kaiser1 , Benoît Valley1,2, Maurice B. Dusseault3 and Damien Duff1

1 CEMI - Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation, Sudbury, Canada

2 Geological Institute, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

3 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

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Hydraulic Fracturing Mine Back Trials — Design Rationale and Project Status

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**Chapter 45**

**Monitoring and Measuring Hydraulic Fracturing Growth**

Narrabri Coal Operations is longwall mining coal directly below a 15 to 20 m thick conglom‐ erate sequence expected to be capable of producing a windblast upon first caving at longwall startup and producing periodic weighting during regular mining. Site characterisation and field trials were undertaken to evaluate hydraulic fracturing as a method to precondition the conglomerate strata sufficiently to promote normal caving behaviour at longwall startup and reduce the severity of periodic weighting. This paper presents the results of the trials and

Initial work was directed at determining if hydraulic fractures were able to be grown with a horizontal orientation, which would allow efficient preconditioning of the rock mass by placing a number of fractures at different depths through the conglomerate from vertical boreholes drilled from the surface. The measurements and trials were designed to determine the in situ principal stresses, the hydraulic fracture orientation and growth rate, and whether the fractures could be extended as essentially parallel fractures to a radius of at least 30 m. Overcore stress measurements were used to determine the orientation and magnitude of the in situ principal stresses, a surface tiltmeter array was used to determine the hydraulic fracture orientation, and stress change monitoring, pressure monitoring and temperature logging in offset boreholes were used to establish the fracture growth rate, lateral extent, and that the fractures maintained their initial spacing to a radial distance of greater than 30 metres. The measurements and trials demonstrated that horizontal fractures could be extended parallel to one another to a distance of 30 to 50 m by injection of 5,000 to 15,000 litres of water at a rate of 400 to 500 L/min. Results from the trial allowed a preconditioning plan to be developed and

> © 2013 Jeffrey et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

> © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

illustrates the effectiveness of hydraulic fracturing as a preconditioning technique.

**During Preconditioning of a Roof Rock over a Coal**

**Longwall Panel**

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/56325

successfully implemented.

**Abstract**

R. G. Jeffrey, Z. Chen, K. W. Mills and S. Pegg

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter
