This study discusses the practical engineering problem of determining random load sources on coal-rock structures. A novel combined regularization technique combining mollification method (MM) and discrete regularization (DR), which was called MM-DR technique, was proposed to reconstruct random load sources on coal-rock structures. MM-DR technology is compared with DR, Tikhonov regularization (TR), and maximum entropy regularization (MER) in load reconstruction. The results show that the reconstructed random load sources are more consistent with the real load sources using MM-DR technique combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO) and L-curve method, which was named as PSO-L method, and selecting optimal
ω
value of kernel function is beneficial to overcome the ill-posed of random load sources reconstruction and to obtain the stable and approximate solutions. The method proposed in this study provides a theoretical basis for the recognition of coal-rock interface.