Calibration of the PM4Sand model for hard-rock mine tailings based on laboratory and field testing results

Abstract

A comprehensive campaign of laboratory and field tests has been conducted to characterize the behaviour of tailings from a hard-rock mine. Cyclic triaxial, direct simple shear, and triaxial simple shear tests have shown that the contractive tailings are susceptible to liquefaction and that their behaviour is similar to loose sand despite their higher fines’ content. To model the behaviour of tailings’ impoundments in dynamic simulations, the PM4Sand constitutive model is calibrated based on the dataset presented here. Some of the model parameters are defined based on consolidation and compression tests, while the critical state line (CSL) is defined based on the results of monotonic triaxial and direct simple shear tests. The CSL is lower for tailings than for most natural sands, which is consistent with previous studies. The calibrated model can reproduce reasonably well the monotonic behaviour and provides an excellent fit of the cyclic strength curves measured in the lab at different confining pressures and density index. The results presented in this paper indicate that the PM4Sand model can be used to simulate the cyclic behaviour of low-plasticity, hard-rock tailings. The proposed procedure also provides general guidelines regarding model calibration for other types of tailings.