Promoting Sustainable Coal Mining: Investigating Multifractal Characteristics of Induced Charge Signals in Coal Damage and Failure Process

Monitoring and preventing coal–rock dynamic disasters are essential for ensuring sustainable and safe mining. Induced charge monitoring, as a geophysical method, enables sustainable monitoring of coal–rock deformation and failure. The induced charge signal contains crucial information regarding damage evolution, making it imperative and important to explore its temporal characteristics for effective monitoring and early warnings of dynamic disasters in deep mining. This paper conducted induced charge monitoring tests at different loading rates, investigating the multifractal characteristics of induced charge signals during the early and late stages of loading. It proposed the maximum generalized dimension D ( q ) max , multifractal spectrum width Δ α , and height difference Δ f as multifractal parameters for induced charge signals. Additionally, quantitative characterization of coal damage was performed, studying the variation patterns of signal multifractal characteristic parameters with coal damage evolution. This study revealed the induced charge signal of the coal body multifractal characteristics in the whole loading process. In the late loading stage, the double logarithmic curve demonstrated some nonlinearity compared to the previous period, indicating the higher non-uniformity of the induced charge time series. D ( q ) max and Δ α in the late loading stage were higher than those in the early stage and increased with loading rates. As coal damage progressed, there were significant jumps of D ( q ) max in both the early and late stages of damage, with larger jumps indicating richer fracture events in the coal. The width Δ α showed an overall trend of increase–decrease–increase with coal damage evolution, while the height difference Δ f fluctuated around zero in the early stage of damage development but increased significantly during severe damage and destruction. By studying the multifractal characteristics of induced charge signals, this study provides insights for the early identification of coal–rock dynamic disasters.