Abstract
Tailings dams, as essential mining structures, are being built globally for containing the chief waste stream of the mining industry. Catastrophic tailings dam breaches have occurred frequently over the past decade, causing severe impacts on the environment, economy, and human health. The foreknowledge of the tailings dam breach overland flow is crucial for the risk assessment and emergency response planning in order to prevent or minimize possible losses. Using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) photogrammetry and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical method, this study proposed a multidisciplinary procedure for modelling a hypothetical tailings dam breach run out flow over the downstream complex terrain. A case study on a 97-m-height tailings dam in Shandong Province of China was carried out. The proposed procedure was proven applicable to determine the overland tailings flow. The submerged area and flow velocities suggested that the downstream G2 highway would hardly be threatened and more concerns should be paid on the factory plants and workers deployed between the dam toe and the highway. Additionally, the application of UAV photogrammetry in the mining industry as a supplementary surveying method can be further expanded, especially for the numerous small-scale mining sites. The proposed procedure is then recommended for the safety management of the tailings’ storage facilities globally.
Highlights
A tailings storage facility (TSF) is an essential structure in the mining industry built for the purpose of storing unwanted and currently uneconomical mine waste tailings behind one or more tailings dams
The orthophoto and Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the research area are shown in Figure 5 and
The orthophoto and Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the research area are shown in Figures 5 and 6b
Summary
A tailings storage facility (TSF) is an essential structure in the mining industry built for the purpose of storing unwanted and currently uneconomical mine waste tailings behind one or more tailings dams. Unlike water-retaining dams, where construction materials usually consist of concrete, rock, or soil, tailings dams are mostly being built using tailings themselves in order to minimize costs [1]. The literatures [2,3] present that the rate of tailings dam breach (TDB) accident over the 100 years between 1910 and 2010 was estimated to be 1.2%, which is more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of normal water-retaining dams (0.01%). Major TDB accidents with a sheer volume of released tailings or heavy casualties have been occurring more frequently [4,5]. For example [4], the Brumadinho dam accident at Córrego de Feijão iron ore mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil, occurred on 25 January 2019 and released almost its complete holdings of 12 million m3 of tailings. About three years earlier of the Brumadinho dam accident, on 5 November 2015, another catastrophic TDB accident occurred in
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