The 1873 collapse of the Saint-Maximilien panel at the Varangeville salt mine

The 1873 panel collapse at the Varangéville salt mine (Lorraine, France) is described. Post-accident reports, as well as the experience drawn from neighbouring panels and mines, proved that pillars punched the marly layers on which they rested—a unique failure mechanism in the history of salt mines. The database on rock mechanical behaviour is relatively small, but it allows proposing credible values of the two most important mechanical parameters: floor cohesion and roof stiffness. Numerical computations confirm that the central pillar, despite its large horizontal dimensions, punched the floor and that large strains may have localized in the rock mass above the panel edge, allowing large-scale deformation of the roof and catastrophic evolution of pillar punching.