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Grzegorz STROZIK

The possibility of crushed aggregates use for filling of large, shallow underground voids

For filling of underground voids mainly fine-grained slurries, are used, generally made from fly ash or bulk mineral binders. In case of large voids or hydraulically interconnected systems of voids (Fig. 1) aggregates can be used to minimize uncontrolled migration of fill slurries to distant parts of caved rock mass (Fig. 2). Aggregates can be located as dry material thrown on the bottom of the void directly from pipe or horizontally, with use of special ejector at the end of the pipe (Fig. 3). Dimensions of created piles can be calculated on the basis of kinetic energy and internal friction angle of the aggregates. When large aggregates grains are used, the piles contain high volume of voids, which must be filled with a slurry being able to fully fill the voids and stabilize the pile structure. In laboratory tests, filling properties of different fly ash – water slurries have been conducted using a large diameter pipe filled with aggregates of determined volume of voids (Fig. 4). Loss of solids and average velocity of flow through the aggregates have been measured by differentiated concentration of mixtures and pressure head (Tab. 1). The results show that the build-up of filling in voids increases with decreasing flow velocity (Fig. 5) and enhancing concentration of solids (Fig. 6), however both factors are strongly depended on general flow properties required for hydraulic transportation of fill slurries in pipelines.