Some Studies on the Pseudostatic Analyses of Water Retention Type Tailings Dams

Tailings dams have been widely constructed to store the milled and mined out residual waste or tailings from the mining industry. These residues could be hazardous and/or toxic in nature; therefore, it is pertinent to design these storage structures in such a way that they are stable on the wake of slope failures due to accidents arising from natural and anthropogenic activities. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the seepage and stability behaviour of water retention type tailings dams of different heights under static and seismic conditions. To this effect, the effect of horizontal drain on the seepage and stability behaviour of tailings dams was investigated using Soil Vision software. Seepage analyses were carried out using SVFLUX, and pseudostatic slope stability analyses were performed using SVSLOPE software for various combinations of horizontal and vertical seismic accelerations. It was found that the use of horizontal drain ensured the depletion of phreatic surface and improved the stability of the dam in the downstream side under both static and seismic conditions. A comparison has been made for obtaining the most suitable configuration for the construction.