Tailings Dams Numerical Models: A Review (original) (raw)

World Congress on Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering

A significant number of tailings dam failures have occurred around the world in the last few decades resulting in fatalities, damage to infrastructure and environmental harm. Among these, many have been caused by the liquefaction phenomenon that can suddenly transform an earthen dam into a liquid river of mud. To date, many general aspects related to tailings dam failures and tailing management have been dealt with in the literature. However, the materials used to build the dams, mainly consisting of underconsolidated silts, are still poorly studied and adequate modeling of their behavior is still an open challenge. This paper presents the state of existing knowledge on this latter topic. The problem related to the storage of mining residues in tailings dams is first described. For this purpose, fifteen scientific articles, in which numerical modeling is carried out on this type of structures, are analyzed. Aspects relating to the type of structure investigated and connected to numerical modeling such as software and constitutive models used are reported and commented. A summary of the main geotechnical parameters used in the modeling is presented and analyzed. Finally, the most salient aspects of the results obtained from the various analysis are exposed.