Start-Up Mechanism and Dynamic Process of Landslides in the Full High Waste Dump

Chunhui Cao,Jili Feng,Zhigang Tao

doi:10.3390/w12092543

Abstract

Landslides often occur in the open-pit mine dump, which is harmful to the safety operation of mines and slopes. In this work, the landslides that occurred in 2014 at Nanfen open-pit mine of China are studied to understand the triggering mechanism and dynamic process of landslides in the full high waste dump. Field investigation, hydrogeological data analysis, satellite map data, and numerical simulation are combined to analyze and evaluate the landslides. The study shows that the continuous and intensive dumping can lead to shear failure under the action of self-weight. The shear strength of loose dump bodies significantly relies on the water content, freeze-thaw cycle, pore pressure, and gradation of the dump soils. These factors result in the occurrence of landslides in the dump slope. The predictions by the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method show that the shape, influence range, and slip distance of landslides are consistent with that of the field investigation. The present study shows that the SPH method is a powerful numerical technique to describe landslides’ problems.

Highlights

Landslides are natural disasters, in which the soils or rock masses on the slope slide down the slope along a specific weak plane or weak zone [1,2]
When most of the frozen layers melt, the water pressure inside the soil is close to the maximum that reaches to the critical failure stage of landslides
We have studied the characteristics of landslides occurred in Nanfen open-pit mine of China by combined field investigation and geological and hydrological data collection, with the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method

Summary

Introduction

Landslides are natural disasters, in which the soils or rock masses on the slope slide down the slope along a specific weak plane or weak zone [1,2]. Because of their high speed, huge energy, and strong impact destructive force, landslides usually lead to a severe loss of personal and property [3–6]. The study study area area of of landslide landslide of of the the full full high high waste waste dump

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion