To further reveal the mechanism of coal gas migration, the reasons for coal temperature changes during the methane desorption process were analyzed from the aspect of molecular motion and the thermodynamic theory. The temperature change mechanism was investigated, and the mathematical equation was established to describe the variation of temperature change during the methane desorption and diffusion process. The established equation was applied for the calculation of temperature change for two types of coal samples, and the measured and theoretical values of temperature changes were obtained. The results show that the temperature changes in the coal gas desorption process are mainly caused by the heat adsorption. The heat adsorption phenomenon was also caused by free gas expansion during the pressure relief process. The gas diffusion and work done for gas seepage also need heat adsorption. The temperature change is positively correlated to the coal gas pressure, quantity, and limit value of gas desorption volume. Due to the poor insulation in the test system, the difference between the theoretical and the measured temperature change values increase with the adsorption equilibrium pressure. It is helpful to further reveal the mechanism of coal and gas outburst. It also has an important reference value for controlling gas dynamic disasters in coal mines.

Constitutive effect is extremely important for the research of the mechanical behavior of surrounding rock in hydraulic fracturing engineering. In this paper, based on the triaxial test results, a new elastic-peak plastic-softening-fracture constitutive model (EPSFM) is proposed by considering the plastic bearing behavior of the rock mass. Then, the closed-form solution of a circular opening is deduced with the nonassociated flow rule under the cavity expansion state. Meanwhile, the parameters of the load-bearing coefficient and brittles coefficient are introduced to describe the plastic bearing capacity and strain-softening degrees of rock masses. When the above two parameters take different values, the new solution of EPSFM can be transformed into a series of traditional solutions obtained based on the elastic-perfectly plastic model (EPM), elastic-brittle plastic model (EBM), elastic-strain-softening model (ESM), and elastic-peak plastic-brittle plastic model (EPBM). Therefore, it can be applied to a wider range of rock masses. In addition, the correctness of the solution is validated by comparing with the traditional solutions. The effect of constitutive relation and parameters on the mechanical response of rock mass is also discussed in detail. The research results show that the fracture zone radii of circular opening presents the characteristic of EBM > EPBM > ESM > EPSFM; otherwise, it is on the contrast for the critical hydraulic pressure at the softening-fracture zone interface; the postpeak failure radii show a linear decrease with the increase of load-bearing coefficients or a nonlinear increase with the increasing brittleness coefficient. This study indicates that the rock mass with a certain plastic bearing capacity is more difficult to be cracked by hydraulic fracturing; the higher the strain-softening degree of rock mass is, the easier it is to be cracked. From a practical point of view, it provides very important theoretical values for determining the fracture range of the borehole and providing a design value of the minimum pumping pressure in hydraulic fracturing engineering.