What can the changes in shield resistance tell us during the period of shearer’s cutting and neighboring shields’ advance?

In order to determine the influence of shearer’s cutting and neighboring shields’ advance on the support resistance variation, leg pressure data of all 235 shields in the panel LW61 of Cumberland coal mine were analyzed. The results show that the relationship between the leg pressure increment and the distance from shield to front drum of shearer is a quadratic function and that the higher leg pressure increment before shield advance tends to be related to adverse roof conditions. In addition, the three proposed leg pressure increment-related parameters and the three traditional parameters (time-weighted average pressure, setting pressure, and final pressure) of approximately 32000 shield supporting cycles were calculated by a self-developed software package to analyze the correlation between them. The results show that there is a powerful connection between them, and that the three proposed leg pressure increment-related parameters could be used as the indexes to evaluate the interaction between shields and the roof, and to identify the periodic weighting.