Abstract:The purpose of this study is to apply some statistical and soft computing methods such as Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) and support vector machines (SVMs) methodology to the determination of pillar stability for underground mines selected from various coal and stone mines by using some index and mechanical properties, including the width, the height, the ratio of the pillar width to its height, the uniaxial compressive strength of the rock and pillar stress. The study includes four main stages: sampling, testing, modeling and assessment of the model performances. During the modeling stage, two pillar stability prediction models were investigated with FDA and SVMs methodology based on the statistical learning theory. After using 40 sets of measured data in various mines in the world for training and testing, the model was applied to other 6 data for validating the trained proposed models. The prediction results of SVMs were compared with those of FDA as well as the measured field values. The general performance of models developed in this study is close; however, the SVMs exhibit the best performance considering the performance index with the correct classification rate P_rs by re-substitution method and P_cv by cross validation method. The results show that the SVMs approach has the potential to be a reliable and practical tool for determination of pillar stability for underground mines.

Key words: underground mine; pillar stability; Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA); support vector machines (SVMs); prediction