Impacts of tailings flow slides

Abstract

This paper describes characteristics of tailings ponds, highlighting situations and events that weaken such facilities, and provides a method for calculating the destructive capacity of tailings flow slides from failed facilities. There are generally two classes of failures. The first type is caused by water flowing over the tailings, causing erosion and transportation of the material (overtopping), as well as by piping, which weakens the mechanical characteristics of the dam fill. In such cases, the eroded material is progressively deposited down-gradient. In the second class, dam failures can produce violent flow slides that rush downhill and cause devastation. This extreme effect is caused by liquefaction of the material contained in the ponds and/or the dams, with failure of the latter. The consequences of the flow slide are considered by making comparisons between the pressure the flow exerts on downstream structures, and the pressures required to cause such structures to collapse. Some precautionary measures are proposed to limit damages if failure occurs. Given the similarity between such failures and other landslides, it may also be desirable to apply the measures suggested here to natural slopes.