Acoustic emission from gas-filled coal under triaxial compression

Acoustic emission (AE) experiments have been performed on gas-saturated coal specimens under conventional triaxial compression. The AE characteristics were investigated for a methane gas flow through the coal specimen. One AE parameter, AE count, when normalized by the total count number was used to represent the damage evolution in the gassy coal. It is shown that this AE parameter is a reasonable indicator for damage occurring within the coal specimen since its envelope has almost the same shape as the complete stress–strain curve, except for a short time delay. In addition, the change in AE count is highly consistent with the change in coal permeability. Test results also show that methane containing coal emits a small number of AE events before entering the yield stage. AE activity gradually increases during the yield process up to the peak stress. The lowest permeability corresponds to the highest AE activity, implying failure will soon occur. An AE based constitutive model was constructed and the theoretical results agree well with those of experiments.