Investigation of Near Surface Faults through Electrical Resistivity Tomography in Underground Coal Mines of Central India

Coal mining is a very common industrial practice in India. Due to the complex geology of the sedimentary basins, the coal seams are often encountered by structural discontinuities in form of faults, which heavily affects the mining operations in terms of safety, productivity and economy. The area under investigation i.e. Khairaha mine is an underground coal mine situated in the Sohagpur Coalfield of Central India. Recently, continuous miner was deployed for enhancing the production from Khairaha coal mine. The continuous miner encountered several faults, which created obstacles during development of galleries. Since, these shallow faults had minor throw, therefore they remained undetected during exploration (carried out through geological correlation of boreholes) and geological modelling of coal seams. The identification of these shallow minor faults was very essential for streamlining the productivity of the deployed continuous miner and to protect it from damage from hard formations. Thus, ERT was carried out over seven profile lines, which were drawn along the incline’s direction and perpendicular the direction of galleries. The investigation helped in locating the position and orientation of the six minor faults, which helped in proper re-designing of galleries for continuous miner for enhancing productivity from the coal mine.