ETUDE D’AMELIORATION DU SYSTEME DES SOUTENEMENT EN MINE SOUTERRAINE DE KAKULA NORD, SECTION 108, BLOC 56

In underground mining, ground support plays a critical role in ensuring personnel safety, protecting equipment, and maintaining excavation stability. Its performance directly influences the lifespan of workings and the continuity of mining operations. At the Kakula mine, the current support system is experiencing several failures due to poor rock quality, large excavation dimensions, and repetitive blasting-induced vibrations. These combined factors increase the risk of excessive convergence, support degradation, and potential instability. The objective of this work is to improve the support system to ensure safe and efficient personnel and equipment operations. To achieve this goal, the analytical method was used. This approach allowed us to correlate the convergence–confinement method in order to determine the essential equilibrium parameters of the underground excavation, identify the limitations of the current support system, and propose optimization measures to enhance excavation safety and durability. Based on analytical calculations derived from underground excavation stability equations, the following results were obtained: Maximum displacement without support is 11.34 cm, indicating a strong tendency for rock mass deformation in the absence of reinforcement; Support stiffness is 3600 kN/m, showing a high capacity to resist closure-induced stresses; The limit equilibrium point is reached at 3.66 cm for a load of 1375 kN/m, revealing that the support system succeeds in stabilizing the excavation within a mechanical equilibrium zone; Confinement evolution ranges from 0.01 m to 0.08 m, indicating progressive rock mass compression; Convergence evolution remains controlled within the studied range, from 0.08 m to 0.08 m.