Background Coal-rock dynamic disasters represent engineering disasters caused by the instability of the multi-phase and multi-field coupling of coal strata under mining disturbances, severely restricting the safe exploitation of deep coal resources. Elucidating the disaster-inducing mechanisms lays the foundation for exploring effective monitoring and early warning, along with prevention and control technologies, while instruments for simulation experiments provide crucial tools for investigating the mechanisms. Gradually increasing scientific and technological level has contributed to the continuous improvement in China's independently developed instruments for simulation experiments on coal-rock dynamic disasters. However, as engineering activities progressively extend toward deep parts, the multi-phase and multi-field coal occurrence environments in deep strata impose higher requirements for the instruments’ functions and structures.

Methods  Based on the CiteSpace software, this study presents a review of literature on China’s development of instruments for simulation experiments on coal-rock dynamic disasters issued in the past 50 years. Accordingly, the development trends and current status of these instruments are comprehensively summarized from three aspects: structure and function, multi-field environment simulation, and monitoring devices and methods.

Results and Conclusions  In China, instruments for simulation experiments on coal-rock dynamic disasters have evolved from uniaxial to biaxial and then to triaxial loading, enabling the simulation of the true triaxial stress environments of coal strata. By introducing a module of dynamic load disturbances, a static-dynamic combined true triaxial loading structure has been designed, supporting the simulation of various engineering disturbances in coal mining. The environments simulated by the instruments have transitioned from a single stress field to two fields with fluid-solid coupling (stress and seepage fields) and further to multiple fields with thermo-solid-fluid coupling, gradually achieving the simulation of complex multi-physical field environments in real strata. Furthermore, the monitoring devices and methods of the instruments have progressively advanced from conventional stress-strain monitoring to multi-dimensional information monitoring, allowing disaster-inducing and precursor information in the disaster evolution process to be accurately captured. Nevertheless, existing instruments still struggle to faithfully reproduce the complex multi-phase and multi-field disaster-inducing environments encountered by deep underground engineering. In the future, the instruments should overcome three key challenges. First, their structures and functions should allow for the simulation of both the real in-situ stress environments of strata and engineering disturbances with multiple strain rates. Second, they should support the in-situ simulation of environments with the coupling of the stress, seepage, and temperature fields. Third, it is necessary to develop monitoring devices and methods that enable the dynamic capture of information on the evolution of multi-field parameters and, by introducing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), to achieve the in-situ reproduction of the disaster evolution process.