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Physical model investigation on effects of drainage condition and cement addition on consolidation behavior of tailings slurry within backfilled stopes

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Abstract

Estimation of stressses within the tailings slurry during self-weight consolidation is a critical issue for cost-effective barricade design and efficient backfill planning in underground mine stopes. This process requires a good understanding of self-weight consolidation behaviors of the tailings slurry within practical stopes, where many factors can have significant effects on the consolidation, including drainage condition and cement addition. In this paper, the prepared tailings slurry with different cement contents (0, 4.76wt%, and 6.25wt%) was poured into 1.2 m-high columns, which allowed three drainage scenarios (undrained, partial lateral drainage near the bottom part, and full lateral drainage boundaries) to investigate the effects of drainage condition and cement addition on the consolidation behavior of the tailings slurry. The consolidation behavior was analyzed in terms of pore water pressure (PWP), settlement, volume of drainage water, and residual water content. The results indicate that increasing the length of the drainage boundary or cement content aids in PWP dissipation. In addition, constructing an efficient drainage boundary was more favorable to PWP dissipation than increasing cement addition. The final stable PWP on the column floor was not sensitive to cement addition. The final settlement of uncemented tailings slurry was independent of drainage conditions, and that of cemented tailings slurry decreased with the increase in cement addition. Notably, more pore water can drain out from the cemented tailings slurry than the uncemented tailings slurry during consolidation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Young Scientist Project of the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2021YFC2900600) and the Beijing Nova Program (No. 20220484057). The first author acknowledges the financial support from China Scholarship Council under Grant CSC No. 202110300001.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Resource Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Qinghai Ma

  2. BGRIMM Technology Group, Beijing, 100160, China

    Qinghai Ma, Guangsheng Liu, Xiaocong Yang & Lijie Guo

  3. National Centre for International Research on Green Metal Mining, Beijing, 100160, China

    Qinghai Ma, Guangsheng Liu, Xiaocong Yang & Lijie Guo

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  1. Qinghai Ma
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  2. Guangsheng Liu
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  3. Xiaocong Yang
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  4. Lijie Guo
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Correspondence to Guangsheng Liu or Lijie Guo.

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Lijie Guo is a youth editorial board member for this journal and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. All authors declare that there are no competing interests.

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Ma, Q., Liu, G., Yang, X. et al. Physical model investigation on effects of drainage condition and cement addition on consolidation behavior of tailings slurry within backfilled stopes. Int J Miner Metall Mater 30, 1490–1501 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-023-2642-5

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