International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (2017) xxxxxx

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International Journal of Mining Science and Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijmst

Numerical investigation into the effect of backfilling on coal pillar

strength in highwall mining
Mo S. a, Canbulat I. a, Zhang C. a, Oh J. a,, Shen B. b, Hagan P. a
a
School of Mining Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
b
CSIRO Energy, QCAT, 1 Technology Court, Pullenvale 4069, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper attempts to quantify the effect of backfilling on pillar strength in highwall mining using
Received 22 December 2016 numerical modelling. Calibration against the new empirical strength formula for highwall mining was
Received in revised form 15 March 2017 conducted to obtain the material parameters used in the numerical modelling. With the obtained coal
Accepted 1 May 2017
strength parameters, three sets of backfill properties were investigated. The results reveal that the behav-
Available online xxxx
ior of pillars varies with the type and amount of backfill as well as the pillar width to mining height ratio
(w/h). In case of cohesive backfill, generally 75% backfill shows a significant increase in peak strength, and
Keywords:
the increase in peak strength is more pronounced for the pillars having lower w/h ratios. In case of non-
Highwall mining
Backfill
cohesive backfill, the changes in both the peak and residual strengths with up to 92% backfill are negli-
Coal pillar gible while the residual strength constantly increases after reaching the peak strength only when 100%
Strength backfill is placed. Based on the modelling results, different backfilling strategies should be considered
Numerical modelling on a case by case basis depending on the type of backfill available and desired pillar dimension.
2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology. This is an open
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction [6]. In South Africa, backfilling was considered as a way of stabiliz-

Highwall mining is a mining method that produces coal from
the base of highwall in surface mines as illustrated in Fig. 1 [1].
A series of parallel entries are driven into the coal seam using
two types of highwall mining systems, namely, continuous high-
wall mining (CHM) and auger mining. CHM system uses a contin-
uous miner generating typically 3.5 m wide rectangular entries
while auger system excavates single or double holes typically from
1.5 m to 1.8 m in diameter [2]. The penetration depths range from
50 m to 500 m depending on the highwall mining systems and
mining conditions [3]. The pillars are then left between the mined
entries to support the overburden.
Backfilling technology has been widely used in the mining
industry. In metalliferous mining, backfilling is typically used to
provide a working platform, usually in cut and fill mining, or a sup-
port to the pillars and walls for higher productivity [4,5]. It has
been widely applied in underground coal mining. In order to
reduce surface subsidence, longwall goaf is backfilled to reduce
the mining void and subsequently the caving height in some Euro-
pean mines. In Chinese mines backfill material is injected into part-
ing planes in the roof strata to prevent the closure of the partings
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: joung.oh@unsw.edu.au (J. Oh).
ing old and/or under-designed bord and pillar workings as well as
directly achieving higher recovery by increasing pillar height in
thick seam conditions [7,8]. In Australian coal operations, backfill-
ing has not been widely practised though a case of backfilling into
pre-driven longwall recovery roadway in weak roof areas in a long-
wall mine was reported [9]. In another application in Australia, old
coal mine workings were backfilled to prevent potential subsi-
dence damage to a new road development on surface [10].
With the wide application of backfilling in the mining industry,
research was carried out in the late 1990s to investigate the possi-
bility of utilizing backfilling in highwall mining for the purpose of
increasing coal recoveries [5,11]. As illustrated in Fig. 2, a typical
highwall mining layout incorporates the web pillars, generated
by excavation of a series of entries using CHM system, and the bar-
rier pillars that are left between the panels. If the entries are back-
filled, the strength of web pillar will increase due to the
confinement. Therefore, with the use of backfill, potentially it
may be possible to generate more slender pillars or omit the bar-
rier pillars in highwall mining panel, which can lead an enhanced
recovery. In addition, the web pillars are known to fail suddenly
accompanying catastrophic domino failures due to their low resid-
ual strengths [12,13]. Therefore, apart from the potential advan-
tage of an enhanced coal recovery by using backfilling in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2017.07.003
2095-2686/ 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article in press as: Mo S et al. Numerical investigation into the effect of backfilling on coal pillar strength in highwall mining. Int J Min Sci
Technol (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2017.07.003
2 S. Mo et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (2017) xxxxxx

a total of 29 cases with 14 collapsed cases and 15 uncollapsed

cases. Therefore, it is noted that the formula is only applicable to
the highwall mining pillars with width to height ratios (w/h) from
0.5 to 2.5.
It is considered that as the new formula has been developed
from an actual database of highwall mining, it represents the best
in-situ behavior of coal pillars in highwall mining. Due to the nat-
ure of long pillars in highwall mining conditions, plane strain anal-
ysis was conducted using the two-dimensional numerical software
FLAC [19]. The constitutive law for coal pillars was the strain-
Fig. 1. Highwall mining operation using CHM system [1].
softening model based on the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion.
Therefore, the calibration process aimed to back calculate a set of
input parameters including the cohesion, angle of internal friction
and corresponding plastic strain range.

2.1. Model development

Fig. 3 shows the pillar model incorporating half of coal, roof and
floor along the symmetrical centerline of the pillar system which is
a repeating geometry in a highwall mining panel. The height of the
Fig. 2. Typical geometry of highwall mining panel with backfill.
roof and floor was 20 m and the mining height was fixed at 3 m
while the pillar widths varied in order to simulate pillars with w/
h ratios from 0.5 to 2.5. The uniform element size of 0.25 m was
highwall mining, pillar stability will be increased significantly if
applied to the coal and a smooth variation of zoning from the coal
there is an increase in residual strength with the use of backfill.
to the boundaries was used for roof and floor with appropriate
A number of forms of backfilling for highwall mining were pro-
aspect ratios to avoid numerical instability. Roller boundaries were
posed and relevant filling methods and indicative costs were pre-
applied along the side of the roof and floor, the bottom of the floor
sented in the past studies [5,11]. Even though backfilling is
and the vertical line.
thought to be effective in increasing coal pillar strength, it was
In this study, the roof and floor were considered to be an elastic
challenging to predict the behavior of the pillars with backfill
material with the stiffer material property [16,2022]. The inter-
due to the difficulties in modelling slender coal pillars and the
faces between coal and the roof and floor were taken from recent
interaction between pillars and different backfill materials.
coal pillar design studies [21,23]. The material properties used
This paper aims to quantify the effect of backfilling in highwall
for the calibration of model are provided in Table 1.
mining on pillar strength using numerical modelling. While few
After generating the grid and assigning the boundary conditions
numerical analyses of the effect of backfilling in highwall mining
and material properties, the model was stepped to an equilibrium
can be found, a limitation of the studies was the modelling of coal
state to develop in-situ stresses. The second equilibrium was then
pillars used in highwall mining [11,14]. In this paper, modelling of
achieved by excavating the entry. The entry width was fixed at
coal pillars is based on a recent study into a pillar design for high-
1.75 m which is a half width of a typical entry width of 3.5 m used
wall mining, which proposes a new empirical pillar strength for-
in the CHM method. Up until this point, very high cohesion and
mula for highwall mining [15]. The numerical investigations into
tensile strength values for coal were initially used to minimize
the interaction between the coal pillar and backfill in bord and pil-
the inertial effects so that more static solutions can be obtained.
lar mining were attempted by Ryder and Wang et al. [7,16], and
similar approach is used in this study. In Section 2, coal pillar prop-
erties are calibrated to represent the behavior of the slender pillars
in highwall mining. In Section 3, different types of backfill are
placed into the entry and the strength of coal pillar is monitored
with increasing backfill. The significance of the numerical results
is discussed in Section 4. It should be noted that only the consider-
ations for CHM system are included in this paper.

2. Calibration of model

Numerical models that are calibrated against empirical pillar

strength formulae can be a reliable way to explain the average
behavior of a pillar model [17]. In this regard, calibration of coal Fig. 3. Geometry of coal pillar model.
parameters was conducted against the proposed linear formula
for highwall mining recently developed by Canbulat et al. [15]:
Table 1
rp 4:660:56 0:44w=h 1 Material properties used for calibration of model.

where rp is the pillar strength, MPa; w/h is the pillar width to min- Material Youngs modulus (GPa) Poissons ratio
ing height ratio. Roof/floor 10 0.25
This new formula has been developed using the maximum like- Coal 2.5 0.30
lihood method, which is similar to how the UNSW pillar strength Interface Normal stiffness = 100 GPa/m; shear
formulae were originally derived [18]. The difference is that only stiffness = 50 GPa/m; cohesion = 0.5 MPa; Internal
friction angle = 30
a highwall mining pillar database has been used, which includes

Please cite this article in press as: Mo S et al. Numerical investigation into the effect of backfilling on coal pillar strength in highwall mining. Int J Min Sci
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 S. Mo et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (2017) xxxxxx
Table 2
Coal properties calibrated against Eq. (1).
Material Youngs modulus (GPa) Poissons ratio
Coal 2.5 0.3
Table 3
Peak strength results calibrated against Eq. (1).
Peak strength calculated by (MPa) w/h = 0.5
Eq. (1) 3.63
Model in Fig. 3 3.48
Then the cohesion and tensile values were set to their original val-
ues and the model was stepped to equilibrium again. Finally, the
increasing load was generated by applying constant velocity of
106 m/s on the top of the roof in the model.
The coal pillar stress was estimated by taking the average of
vertical stresses generated in the elements located at the mid-
point of the pillar. The vertical strain was calculated based on the
ratio of the difference between the average vertical displacements
at the top and bottom of the coal pillar and the mining height.
2.2. Determination of coal parameters
The input parameters for coal were calibrated against Eq. (1), by
monitoring the peak stresses with various sets of input parameters,
which are shown in Table 2. The peak strengths of coal pillars with
w/h ratios of 0.5 and 1, as in this case, were mainly determined by
the peak values of cohesion and internal friction angle, in contrast
to the pillars with w/h ratios of 1.5, 2 and 2.5 determined by both
the peak and residual values of them. The calibration results are
given in Table 3 and Fig. 4.
While the peak strengths were modelled, the validation of the
post-peak behaviors of the modelled pillar was attempted by con-
structing coal pillar models with w/h ratios of up to 10 using the
obtained set of coal properties. The stress-strain curves are
illustrated in Fig. 5, which shows the range of behaviors from
Fig. 4. Stress-strain curves of modelled highwall pillars with w/h ratios from
0.5 to 2.5.
Fig. 5. Stress-strain curves of coal pillar model with w/h ratios from 0.5 to 10.
Please cite this article in press as: Mo S et al. Numerical investigation into the effect of backfilling on coal pillar strength in highwall mining. Int J Min Sci
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3
Cohesion (MPa) Friction angle () Plastic strain
Peak Residual Peak Residual
0.9 0.1 35 12 0.012
w/h = 1 w/h = 1.5 w/h = 2 w/h = 2.5
4.66 5.69 6.71 7.74
4.62 5.92 6.80 7.29
strain-softening for the pillars with lower w/h ratios to strain-
hardening for the pillars with higher w/h ratios. The curves in this
figure describe the general behavior of in-situ coal pillars as agreed
by many researchers [6,12]. As field measurement data for high-
wall mining pillars are rarely available, the modelling of a series
of coal pillars, with w/h ratios from 0.5 to 10 in this study, can
be a practical way to validate the coal properties [24]. Overall,
the set of coal properties can be used for highwall mining pillars,
which follow the peak strengths calculated by Eq. (1) as well as
the general post-peak behaviors of coal pillars.
It is worthy of note that the obtained set of parameters may not
be the unique because different constitutive models, different
combinations of material parameters and different boundary con-
ditions can produce the same calibration results [6,21]. It is also
worth noting that the obtained values are dependent on mesh size,
therefore, those values can be changed if different mesh sizes are
used [21,22].
3. Numerical modelling of backfilling
A few types of backfill, such as a dense fluid of unconsolidated
rejects, a partially consolidated deposit of rejects and a saturated
cement backfill paste were proposed for the application of backfill-
ing in highwall mining [11]. In this paper, three sets of backfill
properties were adopted to investigate the effect of backfilling on
coal pillar strength. These properties, as listed in Table 4, were
adapted from a study of mine remediation using fly ash backfilling
[25]. The mixture of fly ash and water was referred to as non-
cohesive backfill while the combination of fly ash, cement, water,
etc. was termed as cohesive backfill [25]. Two types of cohesive
backfill were considered with the unconfined compressive
strength (UCS) of 0.5 MPa and 1 MPa. The Mohr-Coulomb strength
criterion was used for the inelastic behavior of backfill. The input
parameters given in Table 4 are regarded as typical backfill proper-
ties [16].
For each type of backfill, the percentage fills from 8% to 100% of
the pillar height were placed into the entry and the coal pillar
strengths with varying amounts of backfill were monitored. While
using the same pillar model and modelling process as in the pre-
ceding section, the entry was backfilled and the model was equili-
brated right before applying the increasing load in the model. The
geometry of the coal pillar model with backfill is provided in Fig. 6.
3.1. Cohesive backfill
The peak strengths of pillars with varying amounts of backfill
are listed in Table 5. In case of cohesive backfill, the increase in
peak strength is generally more pronounced as the w/h ratio of
the pillar decreases and the results can be grouped by the w/h ratio
of the pillars. The peak strength of the pillars with w/h ratios of 0.5
4 S. Mo et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (2017) xxxxxx

Table 4
Backfill properties used for modelling [25].

Backfill type Youngs modulus (GPa) Poissons ratio Cohesion (MPa) Friction angle () Dilation angle () Tensile strength (MPa) UCS (MPa)
Cohesive 0.57 0.40 0.12 40 10 0.1 1
Cohesive 0.57 0.40 0.06 40 10 0.05 0.5
Non-cohesive 0.02 0.15 0 42 7.5 0 0

75% to 83% backfill. Meanwhile, the peak strength of the pillars

Fig. 6. Geometry of coal pillar model with backfill.
and 1 generally increases with increasing backfill. Those pillars
show an approximately 50% increase in peak strength when
backfill is placed up to 75%-83% of the pillar height. The pillar with
a w/h ratio of 1.5 also shows an increase in peak strength with
increasing backfill, but the percentage increase is nearly 20% with
with w/h ratios of 2 and 2.5 increases less than 10% with backfill
up to 67%.
In almost all of the cases, the peak strength significantly
increases with 92% backfill height compared to 83% backfill. When
the entries are completely filled with backfill (i.e., 100%), the pillars
show an elastic behavior. The stress-strain curves of the pillars
with w/h ratios of 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5 with 1.0 MPa cohesive backfill
are illustrated in Fig. 7.
The residual strengths of pillars with varying amounts of back-
fill were also monitored, as shown in Table 6. As the values of post-
peak strength are not exactly converged over strain to the residual
strengths, those values at 2% of strain were taken, where the resid-
ual strengths are deemed to be reached.
Considering the range of residual strengths without backfill, in
the order of 0.5 MPa, the residual strength increases considerably
with increasing backfill for the pillars with w/h ratios from 1 to
2.5. The rise in residual strength is more pronounced as the w/h
ratio of the pillar increases. The residual strength of the pillar with

Table 5
Peak strength with cohesive backfill (MPa).

Backfill Percentage of backfill (%) Peak strength (percentage increase compared to non-backfill value)
w/h = 0.5 w/h = 1.0 w/h = 1.5 w/h = 2.0 w/h = 2.5
Cohesive 8 3.50 (1%) 4.79 (4%) 6.07 (3%) 6.83 (0%) 7.27 (0%)
UCS 1 MPa 17 3.54 (2%) 5.04 (9%) 6.31 (7%) 6.98 (3%) 7.33 (1%)
25 3.63 (4%) 5.34 (16%) 6.55 (11%) 7.12 (5%) 7.36 (1%)
33 3.78 (9%) 5.67 (23%) 6.80 (15%) 7.23 (6%) 7.44 (2%)
42 4.00 (15%) 6.00 (30%) 6.98 (18%) 7.34 (8%) 7.52 (3%)
50 4.33 (24%) 6.30 (36%) 7.13 (20%) 7.44 (9%) 7.57 (4%)
58 4.52 (30%) 6.41 (39%) 7.14 (21%) 7.42 (9%) 7.64 (5%)
67 4.78 (37%) 6.57 (42%) 7.08 (20%) 7.41 (9%) 7.69 (5%)
75 5.04 (45%) 6.93 (50%) 7.41 (25%) 8.17 (20%) 8.30 (14%)
83 5.51 (58%) 7.39 (60%) 7.51 (27%) 8.05 (18%) 9.24 (27%)
92 5.98 (72%) 9.07 (96%) 9.76 (65%) 10.40 (53%) 11.69 (60%)
100 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Cohesive 8 3.50 (1%) 4.75 (3%) 6.03 (2%) 6.76 (-1%) 7.17 (-2%)
UCS 0.5 MPa 17 3.53 (1%) 4.95 (7%) 6.26 (6%) 6.94 (2%) 7.31 (0%)
25 3.61 (4%) 5.24 (13%) 6.40 (8%) 7.22 (6%) 7.67 (5%)
33 3.75 (8%) 5.50 (19%) 6.67 (13%) 7.27 (7%) 7.62 (5%)
42 3.94 (13%) 5.74 (24%) 6.79 (15%) 7.24 (6%) 7.50 (3%)
50 4.20 (21%) 5.97 (29%) 6.85 (16%) 7.21 (6%) 7.38 (1%)
58 4.40 (26%) 6.13 (33%) 6.92 (17%) 7.22 (6%) 7.82 (7%)
67 4.62 (33%) 6.36 (38%) 7.01 (18%) 7.35 (8%) 7.83 (7%)
75 4.84 (39%) 6.69 (45%) 7.27 (23%) 7.87 (16%) 8.73 (20%)
83 5.14 (48%) 7.13 (54%) 7.59 (28%) 7.74 (14%) 8.54 (17%)
92 5.45 (57%) 7.77 (68%) 8.45 (43%) 8.98 (32%) 9.69 (33%)
100 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Fig. 7. Stress-strain curves with 1 MPa cohesive backfill.

Please cite this article in press as: Mo S et al. Numerical investigation into the effect of backfilling on coal pillar strength in highwall mining. Int J Min Sci
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 S. Mo et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (2017) xxxxxx 5

Table 6
Residual strength with cohesive backfill at 2% of strain (MPa).

Backfill Percentage of backfill (%) Residual strength

w/h = 0.5 w/h = 1.0 w/h = 1.5 w/h = 2.0 w/h = 2.5
Cohesive 8 0.35 0.37 0.42 0.55 0.69
UCS 1 MPa 17 0.35 0.37 0.46 0.58 0.77
25 0.35 0.40 0.59 0.77 0.91
33 0.45 0.60 0.74 1.05 1.24
42 0.41 0.53 0.67 1.02 1.36
50 0.43 0.80 1.07 1.31 1.35
58 0.53 0.86 1.13 1.23 1.44
67 0.90 0.99 1.35 1.42 1.69
75 1.18 1.51 1.56 1.79 1.96
83 0.98 1.47 2.10 2.30 2.84
92 1.77 2.63 3.23 3.51 3.81
100 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Cohesive 8 0.35 0.37 0.43 0.55 0.74
UCS 0.5 MPa 17 0.35 0.36 0.45 0.58 0.76
25 0.38 0.43 0.68 0.81 0.98
33 0.39 0.63 0.80 1.00 1.24
42 0.41 0.73 0.89 1.08 1.29
50 0.68 0.72 1.00 1.12 1.32
58 0.77 0.81 1.05 1.18 1.43
67 0.88 1.11 1.09 1.40 1.49
75 0.95 1.47 1.35 1.66 1.90
83 1.04 1.35 1.72 1.98 2.09
92 1.19 1.65 2.04 2.39 2.56
100 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Fig. 8. Stress-strain curves with non-cohesive backfill.

a w/h ratio of 0.5 is reached at around 1 MPa, only with the excep-
tion when 92% of 1 MPa cohesive backfill is placed. In almost all of
the cases, the residual strength significantly increases with 92%
backfill compared to 83% backfill, which is similar to the results
for peak strength.
3.2. Non-cohesive backfill
In case of non-cohesive backfill, only 100% backfill is effective
while the changes in both the peak and residual strengths with
8% to 92% backfill are negligible. Moreover, the peak strength even
hardly increases with 100% backfill while the residual strength
constantly increases over strain as shown in Fig. 8. It is believed
that confinement is not sufficiently generated before reaching
the peak stress, which will be discussed again in Section 4.
4. Discussion
Dw is the lateral displacement of pillar after backfill is placed;
and B is the width of entry.
As can be seen from Eq. (2), the confining pressure is influenced
by the elastic modulus of backfill. With the non-cohesive backfill,
even 92% of backfill makes no substantial difference in terms of
both peak and residual strengths in this modelling study, possibly
due to the low elastic modulus of the non-cohesive backfill. How-
ever, non-cohesive backfill may be effective in other cases where
the lateral displacement of pillars is sufficiently developed prior
to reaching the peak stresses. An example of non-cohesive backfill-
ing in bord and pillar mining is found from Wang et al. [16].
It was also suggested by Galvin that the height of backfill should
be more than two-thirds of the height of pillar as the lateral expan-
sion is largest at mid-height of pillar [6]. The numerical results are
generally consistent with the suggestion that the both peak and
residual strengths considerably increase with 75% cohesive backfill
for almost all of the modelled pillars.

4.1. Mechanism of confinement by backfilling 4.2. Consideration for backfilling in highwall mining

Galvin stated that the confinement by backfilling is primarily
generated in response to lateral expansion of pillar [6]. The confin-
ing pressure developed by backfilling is given in Eq. (2) [8]:
rF EF eF EF Dw=B
where rF is the confining pressure developed by backfilling; EF is
the elastic modulus of backfill; eF is the lateral strain of backfill;
As predicted by numerical modelling in Section 3, the behavior
of pillar varies with the type and amount of backfill as well as the
w/h ratio of the pillars. Therefore, different backfilling strategies
should be considered on a case by case basis depending on the type
2
of backfill available and desired pillar dimension. Some sugges-
tions and considerations for backfilling in highwall mining are
summarized below:

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6 S. Mo et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (2017) xxxxxx
(1) If a significant increase in peak strength is targeted, gener-
ally 75% backfill using cohesive material may be enough to
stabilize the pillars. The pillars with w/h ratios of 0.5 and 1
show 50% increase in peak strength. Compared to that, even
though the increase in peak strength is not significant for the
pillars with w/h ratios of 1.5 to 2.5, the percentage increase
in peak strength is approximately 20%. Furthermore, 75%
backfill also brings improved long-term stability by the
increased residual strengths.
(2) The effect of the cohesive backfill with UCS of 0.5 MPa is not
much different from the one with UCS of 1 MPa, only with
the exception of 92% backfill. Unless more than 50% increase
in peak strength is required with 92% backfill, the 0.5 MPa
cohesive backfill may be as effective as the 1 MPa backfill.
(3) When non-cohesive backfill is considered, full height of pil-
lar should be backfilled. Non-cohesive backfill may be pre-
ferred over cohesive backfill as cement doesnt need to be
added and it can be injected properly into the entry due to
flowability [25].
(4) The property of backfill material typically changes with
time. It is noted that this numerical study is not on a real
time basis and the modelling results assume that the prop-
erty of backfill is settled over time. In reality, the strength
and the corresponding curing time of the chosen backfill
property should be checked.
5. Conclusions
The effect of backfilling in highwall mining was investigated by
numerical analysis. Calibration of coal parameters was conducted
against the new empirical pillar strength formula. Three sets of
backfill including cohesive backfill with UCS of 0.5 MPa and
1 MPa and non-cohesive backfill were chosen.
The modelling results indicate that the behavior of pillar varies
with the type and amount of backfill as well as their w/h ratios. In
case of cohesive backfill, the peak strength of pillars with w/h
ratios of 0.5, 1 and 1.5 increases with increasing backfill while
the peak strength of pillars with w/h ratios of 2 and 2.5 consider-
ably increases with greater than 75% backfill. The residual strength
of pillars generally increases with increasing cohesive backfill.
However, for non-cohesive backfill, only 100% backfill is effective.
Based on the results, different backfilling strategies should be
considered on a case by case basis depending on the type of backfill
available and desired pillar dimension.
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