Abstract: Large scale deep mining has become an inevitable trend in the development of China’s mining industry. Rockbursts and large deformation control are the research highlights in deep mining; and they are both caused by exceedingly concentrated underground- pressure of deep mining. So the aims of pressure-relief mining are to transfer or release some of the concentrated stress. These pressure relief theories, such as underground-pressure arch, bearing pressure, maximum horizontal ground stress, plate theory, the pressure-relief support and theory of axial variation, etc, and their application fields are summarized. From the pressure-relief mechanism, the stress-relief construction technology is classified simply. Moreover, the research methods are overviewed on pressure relief mining too. Results indicate that drilling blasting is a kind of flexible pressure-relief construction technology; and future stress-relief theory research would still follow the principle that the similar simulation and numerical simulation are combined with in-situ test. In general, it is an important research direction to develop FLAC3D software insetting LS-DYNA3D software in the field of numerical simulation of pressure-relief mining with drilling blasting; and it is the research & development direction to innovate pressure-relief construction technology that various pressure-relief theories are combined organically. Furthermore, underground-pressure arch and the pressure-relief support theory must still to be studied in depth.

Key words: underground pressure control, pressure relief mining, pressure relief theory, pressure-relief construction technology, numerical simulation, similar simulation