Contribution to improve pillar analysis in abandoned room and pillar salt mines

Abstract : The long-term behavior of old abandoned salt mine openings is an important question from a safety assessment viewpoint. For room and pillar mines, a simple is proposed method to improve the accuracy of the classical pillar stability analysis methods. The first part of this method deals with pillar behavior by taking into account the mechanical interactions "pillar-roof" and "pillar-floor". This is achieved by means of finite element computations. These computations allow to perform a substantial correction of the classical pillar's failure criterion. The comparison of results of various finite element analyses with those of real cases validated this method.