In acoustic musical instruments special attention needs to be paid to those particularly sensitive parts made of tonewood whose function is to respond to vibrations. One of the most important tonewoods is spruce because of its good resonance properties. Spruce is especially used for soundboards, these being the primary source of sound. Piano manufacturers dry their soundboards to approximately 6% wood moisture, at which drying stage they are glued into the instrument. Fluctuations of the moisture content in the wood affect the tone. With changing moisture content, the instrument can go out of tune, even cracks can appear at very low moisture content in the wood. In addition, the tone colour will change. This may result from changes in the hammer felt or from changes in the vibration properties of the soundboard. Strain-and frequency-dependent damping measurements were carried out on spruce wood at different wood moisture contents in order to investigate the effect of the moisture content on the vibration behaviour. Wood which is slowly dried in air for several years is preferably used for high-class pianos. Therefore, damping measurements on new and on more than 130-year old spruce wood samples were performed.

The unsaturated properties of a soil are required to predict the rate of dewatering and magnitude of strength gain of a mine waste tailings deposit during desiccation dewatering. This prediction requires the soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC), which is time-consuming and challenging to attain and may take anywhere from weeks to months to complete a single test. As a result, alternative methods are needed to estimate the SWCC. Past research has indicated that the soil-freezing characteristic curve (SFCC) can be used to estimate the SWCC in some soils. An experimental method and apparatus were developed to measure the SFCC to estimate the SWCC for different mine waste tailings, including copper tailings, gold tailings, and oil sands centrifuge cake. The experimental method involved using a resistance temperature detector to measure the temperature and time domain reflectometry to determine the unfrozen water content of the soil. The results showed that the SFCC could be used to estimate the SWCC for tailings from metal mines (gold tailings and copper tailings) with a high portion of sand-sized particles and a small amount of clay-sized particles, but was not able to estimate the SWCC for oil sands tailings.

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Tailings dams remain on site following mine closures and must be designed and reclaimed to meet long-term goals, which may include walk-away closure or long-term care and maintenance. The underperformance of these structures can result in significant risks to public and environmental safety, as well as impacts on the future land use and economic activities near the structure. In Alberta, Canada, the expectation is for a tailings dam to be reclaimed and closed so that it can undergo deregistration. To aid in assessing the risks of underperformance during and after closure, a Generalized Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (G-FMEA) framework was developed to assess the long-term geotechnical risks for tailings dams in Alberta, with the goal of assessing the potential success of a tailings dam closure strategy. The G-FMEA is part of an initiative to enhance closure evaluations in Alberta in a collaborative effort between industry, the regulator, and academia. The G-FMEA incorporates the element of time to account for the evolution of the system, which should be applied at the planning stage and updated continually throughout the life of the facility. This paper presents the developed G-FMEA framework for tailings dams in Alberta, including the developed risk matrix framework.

Historically, tailings facilities have been designed primarily with consideration of the mine’s active life. This is problematic, as the lifespan of a tailings dam may far exceed the life of the mine. Over time, it is expected that these structures will transform into a mine waste structure and then eventually a landform. In Alberta, Canada, dam owners can submit a decommissioning, closure, and abandonment (DCA) plan and completion reports to apply for the facility to be de-registered as a dam. If successful, the structure would be considered a solid waste structure and may be reclassified and regulated as a mine waste dump. The Alberta Energy Regulator expects DCAs to be accompanied and supported by risk assessments that consider long-term physical failure modes, including failure modes that may not be applicable during operations, in accordance with Manual 019. To help support the process of de-registering a tailings dam, a risk management tool, referred to as a Generalized Failure Modes Effects (G-FMEA) framework, was developed and presented in the Journal of Minerals in the Special Issue Tailings Dams: Design, Characterization, Monitoring, and Risk Assessment. The G-FMEA was designed to be used for assessing risks of an external tailings facility in closure, with the goal of assessing the long-term risk of geotechnical failure to support the process of de-registration. In Alberta, a number of tailings dams are undergoing closure and reclamation activities. This paper applies the developed G-FMEA framework to an oil sands tailings dam in Alberta to demonstrate the application of the framework. The paper assesses two specific failure modes of two different elements, including clogging of the drains and surface erosion of the berm. The failure modes are assessed over different timescales to demonstrate how the consequence, likelihood, and risk rating may change over time. The results of this process are discussed in the context of the potential for the facility to be de-registered as a dam.