Coal mining leads to stress loading–unloading variation in front of the working face, which influences the occurrence of disasters. In order to study the influence mechanism of stress loading–unloading to the coal failure, a series of experiments of gas-bearing coal deformation and failure under triaxial stress were conducted and acoustic emission (AE) was monitored. In this study, the effect of gas pressure on the mechanical behavior of gas-bearing coal in conventional triaxial stress (CTS) experiments and fixed axial stress and unloading confining stress (FASUCS) experiments was analyzed, and the damage evolution rules of gas-bearing coal in the CTS experiments and FASUCS experiments were determined using AE. The results show that with the increasing of gas pressure, the peak strength and peak strain of gas-bearing coal in the CTS experiments and FASUCS experiments gradually decrease, and the peak of AE ring-down counts lags behind the peak strength. Compared with the CTS experiments, the strength of gas-bearing coal in the FASUCS experiments is lower and the precursor information appears later. The trends in calculated stress and damage coefficient D are consistent with the stress path during unloading, and both begin to rise sharply after the sample enters the plastic stage. Therefore, AE ring-down counts, damage coefficient D, and calculated stress can be used as precursor information for failure of coal and rock, which has great significance for the further study of coal-rock material and for early hazard warning.

The stress of a coal seam increases with an increase in the mining depth, which makes the failure mechanism of a coal mass more complex. To reveal the deformation and failure law of deep coal, a series of triaxial experiments was carried out via laboratory experiments and numerical simulation experiments to analyze the influence of the confining stress on the nonlinear failure characteristics of coal. Based on the crack-propagation model, the values for the inelastic flexibility S1 and the damage variable D were calculated. The results showed that the value of S1 decreased with an increase in the confining stress, which indicated that the increase in the confining pressure could inhibit the crack propagation and that the inhibitory effect was more obvious when the confining pressure increased in a small range of 4 to 12 MPa. The damage variable decreased with an increase in the confining pressure at the yield point; moreover, with an increase in the initial confining pressure, the damage rate gradually decreased. The coal body changed from the compression state to the expansion state when moving from the yield point to the peak point, and the compression value of the yield point and the dilation value of the peak point increased with the increase in the confining pressure. After the coal body entered the yield stage, the change in the confining pressure had a more significant effect on the damage to the coal body.

Coal mining and production activities lead to static loading and unloading changes of coal stress in front of the working face, and the stress change process has a significant influence on the occurrence and development of coal-rock gas dynamic disasters. In this paper, the macroscopic failure characteristics, acoustic emission timing characteristics, and acoustic emission nonlinear characteristics of coal with different gas pressures under true triaxial loading and unloading conditions were experimentally studied. The results showed that the macroscopic failure form of coal with different gas pressures under unloading conditions was tensile-shear composite failure, and the crack structure was formed near the unloading surface. The fractal dimension D and multifractal parameter Δ α of acoustic emission time series both could reflect the complexity of coal fracture process. With the increase of gas pressure, the fractal dimension D and multifractal parameter Δ α decreased, which indicated that the greater the gas pressure, the lower the complexity of coal fracture process. Under different gas pressures, the dynamic change trends of multifractal parameter Δ α were similar, taking the beginning of unloading as the dividing point, the change was roughly in the form of “W.” When the stress state and failure form of coal body changed, the multifractal parameter Δ α changed synchronously, indicating that the change of Δ α could reflect the transformation process of failure mechanism of coal body under load to a certain extent, which was of great significance for clarifying the occurrence and development mechanism of coal-rock gas dynamic disasters and ensuring the safe production in underground coal mines.