Mechanical Stability of a Tailings Dam Incorporating Principles of Unsaturated Soil Mechanics
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-94-6463-258-3_67How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Tailings Dams; Closure Stage; Coupled Model
- Abstract
Tailings dams are an alternative for the final storage of waste produced by the metallurgical mining industry. Unlike water reservoir dams, tailings dams have the particularity of requiring a detailed analysis of the post-operation or closure phase. In this stage, the structure must be as safe as during the exploitation phase, even many years after the economic benefit has ceased. In the present, a significant number of historical cases of tailings dams accidents are known. In several cases, failures were generated by sliding of the dam slope after heavy rains. This article shows a simplified method for the evaluation of the mechanical stability of the embankment wall of a mining dam. The analysis accomplished considers the effect of humidity and suction changes on the shear strength of the materials. Through the implementation of a flow-stability coupled model, it is shown that in the probable occurrence of an extraordinary rainfall event, the studied dam maintains its stability with an acceptable factor of safety.
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Juan Pablo Cerutti AU - Marcelo Esteban Zeballos PY - 2023 DA - 2023/11/08 TI - Mechanical Stability of a Tailings Dam Incorporating Principles of Unsaturated Soil Mechanics BT - Proceedings of the Rocscience International Conference (RIC 2023) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 733 EP - 740 SN - 2589-4943 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-258-3_67 DO - 10.2991/978-94-6463-258-3_67 ID - Cerutti2023 ER -