Abstract
Intense vibration affects the pore water pressure in a tailing dam, with the tendency to induce dam liquefaction. In this study, experiments were performed wherein model tailing dams were completely liquefied by sustained horizontal dynamic loading to determine the effects of the vibration frequency, vibration amplitude, and tailing density on the pore water pressure. The results revealed four stages in the increase of the tailing pore water pressure under dynamic loading, namely, a slow increase, a rapid increase, inducement of structural failure, and inducement of complete liquefaction. A lower frequency and smaller amplitude of the vibration were found to increase the time required to achieve a given pore water pressure in dense tailings. Under the effect of these three factors—vibration frequency and amplitude and tailing density—the tailing liquefaction time varied nonlinearly with the height from the base of the tailing dam, with an initial decrease followed by an increase. The pore pressure that induced structural failure also gradually decreased with increasing height. The increase in the tailing pore pressure could be described by an S-shaped model. A complementary multivariate nonlinear equation was also derived for predicting the tailing pore water pressure under dynamic loading.
Highlights
An increase in the pore pressure of a tailing dam under dynamic loading is accompanied by a decrease in the shear strength
In this study, shaking table tests were used to investigate the effects of dynamic loading on a tailing dam, with particular emphasis on the effects of the vibration frequency, vibration amplitude, and the tailing density on the pore water pressure, with respect to the vibration duration and the location on the dam
A nonlinear function of the critical pore pressure in terms of the above three factors was derived taking into consideration the respective degrees of the correlations of the factors with the pore pressure
Summary
An increase in the pore pressure of a tailing dam under dynamic loading is accompanied by a decrease in the shear strength. With regard to common pore pressure stress, strain, and end chronic models, Liu et al [20] used a stress-controlled undrained dynamic triaxial cyclic shear test and the energy method to investigate the relationship between the pore water pressure and the accumulative energy dissipation in saturated tailing with respect to factors such as the cyclic stress ratio and axialradial consolidation stress ratio. They proposed an energy model of the pore water pressure of the saturated tailing with respect to the stress ratio and axial-radial consolidation stress ratio. The findings of this study promise to enable the prediction of the pore water pressure in saturated tailings under dynamic loading and afford a theoretical basis for the design and safe operation of tailing dams
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