Granular Soils and Contaminant Modeling in Tailing Dams

Abstract

The granular soils of tailings, encompassing clay, gravel, sand, and silt, play a pivotal role in the behavior and stability of tailings dams. Different types of granular soils significantly influence the tailings material’s strength, compressibility, and permeability. This study highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between soil types and contaminant properties when analyzing solute transport through numerical modeling. Consequently, various soil types were incorporated into the initial tailings dam model to simulate contaminant transport based on solute transport analysis. The findings underscored the essential role of granular soils in contaminant dispersion within tailings dams. Finer particles, such as clay and silt, demonstrated higher adsorption capacities, which slow contaminant movement. In contrast, coarser materials, like sand and gravel, enable faster transport, increasing the potential for rapid dispersion.