Assessment of interaction between a waste storage dam and instability in downstream right-side slope by 3D numerical analyses

Abstract

Waste dams (tailings) are used for storing the byproducts of mining operations and very common in mine industry. As the material they are storing can be harmful for the environment and the people in the vicinity, the construction of these dams is of high importance. During the construction phase, the topography of the site and geological-geotechnical parameters of the soils around the dam are as important as the stability and the leakage issues of the main dam body. In this paper, a nickel-ore waste dam located in Manisa-Gördes, Turkey is investigated in detail. At the downstream side of the dam, there was a slope instability at the right-hand side slopes due to improper loading on the top of these slopes. Whether this slope failure will affect the stability of main dam body or not is the main question of this study. Within these con nes, 3D nite element analyses that cover a large area, including the dam, upstream and downstream sides and the waste have been performed before and after the planned downstream slope rehabilitation. The results show that after the rehabilitation of the slopes, the deformations decreased considerably and the waste dam became safer.