The authors have put forward the technical idea and method for multi component Rayleigh wave exploration, successfully developed a special multi component Reyleigh wave exploration instrument and, on the basis of applying Rayleigh polarization analysis to the multi component signal analysis of Rayleith wave exploration record,extracted effective Rayleigh wave signal by means of polarization filtering.The downhole and surface application of this instrument in coal mines has demonstrated that,compared with the single component method,the multi component Rayleigh wave exploration can raise signal to noise ratio,exploration depth and reliability to certain extent.