Abstract: Artificial roof cutting is often used in coal mines to reduce the influence of mining on road‐ way stability under complex geological conditions. Therefore，it is particularly important to determine rea‐ sonable artificial roof cutting parameters. Based on the geological conditions of F6218 fully-mechanized cav‐ ing face with thick and hard roof in Buliangou Coal Mine，the reasonable roof cutting height should be 45~ 67.5 m and the roof cutting angle should be greater than -6.63 ° through theoretical calculation. FLAC3D is used to simulate the stress distribution law of roadway surrounding rock under different roof cutting heights and angles of F6218 main transport crossheading. The results show that when the roof cutting height is 52 m and the roof cutting angle is -5°，the roof of the working face can be smoothly cut off，and the internal stress distribution of the roadway protection coal pillar is low and uniform，which obviously achieves the effect of roof cutting and roadway protection，and the influence of the roof cutting height on the roof cutting effect is more obvious than that of the roof cutting angle. The field monitoring shows that there is a certain range of elastic area in the middle of the coal pillar，and the deformation of the surrounding rock of the F6225 auxilia‐ ry transport roadway is fast and stable. The deformation is within the controllable range，and the effect of roof cutting and roadway protection is remarkable.

Key words: thick and hard roof, thick coal seam, roof cutting and pressure relief, wide coal pillar