The Components of Ground Movement

Abstract

Since the middle of last century, when the coal industry went over from drift mining to deep-level mining, attention has been given in Europe to the ground movements which occur on the extraction of coal. As early as 1860, the railway companies in the Ruhr were taking ground-level measurements, in order to bring evidence of the lowering of their tracks in the event of disputes about mining damage. On the basis of these and similar levellings, there appeared from 1870 onwards, in Germany and in other European countries, a number of scientific publications on ground movements in mining and on mathematical formulae for the prediction of ground subsidence.