Aiming at the problem of spontaneous combustion risk of residual coal in goaf of class I spontaneous combustion coal seam in 15106 working face of Zhuangzihe Coal Mine, the influence of oxygen concentration on the oxidation characteristics of residual coal and the distribution of spontaneous combustion ' three zones ' in goaf was studied by means of temperature programmed experiment and numerical simulation. The experimental results show that with the increase of oxygen concentration, the critical temperature of CO, C2H4 and other characteristic gases decreases, and the activation energy of coal spontaneous combustion decreases, which confirms that the high air leakage environment will aggravate the oxidation process. Field beam tube monitoring combined with seepage-mass transfer coupling numerical simulation, the oxidation zone ranges of the inlet side and the return air side were determined to be 105 ~ 270 m and 60 ~ 220 m, respectively. The simulation results were in good agreement with the measured data by 96.5%. The parameter analysis revealed that when the wind speed increased from 1.0 m/s to 2.0 m/s, the oxidation zone area increased by 59.1%. The study clarifies the positive correlation between air leakage intensity and oxidation zone range and spontaneous combustion risk, and provides a theoretical basis for ventilation control and inert injection strategy for spontaneous combustion prevention and control in goaf under similar conditions.