Abstract: The large-scale failure of overburden rock and the expansion of mining-induced cracks caused by high-intensity mining in the western mining area are easy to cause disasters and accidents to threaten the safe mining of the working face. Finding an economical and efficient active control technology for thick and hard overburden rock is the key to realize the development of coal in the western region. Based on the engineering background of deep buried thick and hard roof mining in 3106 working face, this paper studies the mechanical mechanism and engineering application effect of layered pre-splitting and damage reduction mining technology by means of theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, field test and multi monitoring method. Based on the improved DMT combination model, the stress-energy gradient regulation mechanism of the layered pre-splitting space with ' high-level strong impact and low-level slow release is revealed. An energy functional integrating the contact characteristics of discrete media is constructed, and the nonlinear coupling relationship between overburden damage energy consumption and contact offset energy is quantitatively analyzed. Using COMSOL fluid-solid coupling numerical simulation, the damage evolution law of overburden rock under different pre-splitting layers was compared and analyzed. The results show that the end of the high key stratum pre-splitting will weaken the transmission capacity of the overlying load and cause the continuous failure of the structure. The pre-splitting in the middle of the low key stratum induces crack propagation, and the energy controllable dissipation is realized through deformation, contact slip friction to avoid local energy accumulation. The layered pre-splitting distributes the influence of stress and crack propagation layer by layer, realizes the layered dissipation of strain energy, and effectively avoids the problem of uneven settlement of single-layer pre-splitting.The maximum height of overburden damage after layered pre-splitting is reduced by more than 14 % compared with that without pre-splitting, and the control effect is significantly better than that of single low or high pre-splitting.In the field application, the 3106 working face adopts the layered section fracturing scheme of middle low-end high, and the technical effectiveness is verified by borehole leakage observation and microseismic monitoring. After layered fracturing, the borehole leakage is reduced from 15.7-26.8 L/min to 3.5-8.2 L/min, and the degree of formation fracture propagation is significantly reduced. The total frequency of microseismic events decreased from 54 to 30, the large energy events disappeared, the energy level in the repeated mining area decreased, and the stress concentration in the middle and edge areas of the working face was effectively alleviated. The research shows that the layered pre-splitting technology realizes the source control of mining damage by actively regulating the fracture network and stress field distribution of overburden rock, and significantly reduces the damage degree of overburden rock, which provides theoretical support and technical paradigm for safe, efficient and green mining of similar mines with deep thick and hard roof.