Abstract
Construction or enlargement of tailings ponds must consider the potential risk assessment on life safety and environmental protection in the downstream areas. Among various analysis methods, reduced scale physical model test is an important and intuitive method to carry out the impact analysis of flood overtopping tailings dam. However, the selection of model dam material for progressive overtopping dam failure is a difficult problem, and the impact of flood or debris flow can be greatly overestimated by the instantaneous dam break model tests. Based on the similarity analysis of tailing particle incipient motion, the critical inception state of the tailing particle in model dam is analyzed under the action of similar overtopping flow. Inception similarity of the model is confirmed impossible when using prototype tailings to set up model dam. Preconditions for model dam to reach the inception similarity in reduced scale physical tests are deduced, and incipient velocity tests are carried out to verify the rationality of the theoretical analysis. Taking the soil shear strength as a control method to improve the inception similarity of the reduced scale model, two feasible model dam material schemes are proposed through controlling the particle size or mixing bentonite. Although physical model tests involve multi-aspects of similarity laws, the research on the model material selection based on inception similarity optimization will provide a new reference for improving the physical model testing techniques of overtopping dam break, which can be helpful to emergency management and operational response.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers [42062018], [41702324], [42002286] and [U1765207]).
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HL, JL, and CZ wrote the main text and prepared figures 1–10 together, TZ participated in the formulation and analysis of the physical tests. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Lin, H., Luo, J., Zhou, C. et al. Research on model material selection based on inception similarity in impact analysis of flood overtopping on tailings dam. Environ Earth Sci 82, 276 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-10965-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-10965-5