Design, construction, operation and the effect of fines content and permeability on the seismic performance of tailings sand dams in Chile

Valenzuela, Luis

doi:10.4067/s0718-28132016000100001

Cited by 26 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This culminated in the Government of British Columbia enacting regulations which, historically, were precedent setting in North America. The BC regulations appeared in 1971, but were preceded by the Chilean decree in 1970 that banned upstream construction of tailings dams (Valenzuela, 2016).…”

Section: Regulatory Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geotechnical Risk, Regulation, and Public Policy (Victor de Mello Lecture)

Morgenstern¹

2018

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At this time, there is a crisis associated with concern over the safety of tailings dams and lack of trust in their design and performance. This crisis has resulted from recent high-profile failures of dams at locations with strong technical experience, conscientious operators, and established regulatory procedures. It is the primary intent of this Lecture to assess the underlying cause(s) for this crisis, review the response to it by various agencies, and to make recommendations on how to overcome it. The Lecture begins with a review of the evolving safety culture associated with slope stability problems as exemplified by the achievements in Hong Kong. This is particularly relevant here because Victor de Mello was a key contributor to the recommendations made in 1976 that initiated the development of the Hong Kong Slope Safety System. The Lecture then addresses the evolution of the safety culture associated with water dams. While there is a long history of concern with respect to water dam safety, these concerns were intensified by several catastrophic dam failures that occurred in the USA in the 1970s. The evolution of regulatory systems from that time is recorded, as is the later trend to adopt risk-based safety assessment and regulation. However, the process that has emerged has been much affected by the Oroville Dam Spillway incident, and dam safety practice is being reassessed by many. This Lecture summarizes some of the major findings arising from the analysis of this incident and makes recommendations to move to more performancebased risk-informed design and safety reviews that are constrained by reliable evidence to a greater degree than is currently the case. Turning to the evolving safety culture for tailings dams, this emerged with rational dam design procedures in the 1970s, more or less as an appendage to water dam design. The growth of environmental legislation related to surface water quality had a considerable impact as well. Hence, a twin regulatory regime emerged in the 1970s. The regulatory regime for tailings dams is typically more regional than national. The failure rate for tailings dams has generally been proportionately higher than water dams and thus has received considerable attention in the technical literature, however without measurable results. The recent failures of major dams in technically advanced regions of the world, operated by mature mining organizations and designed by recognized consulting engineers, has created a crisis in terms of a loss of confidence and trust associated with the design, construction, operation, and closure of tailings storage facilities. Responses to these failures are analyzed, and all are found wanting, particularly since the widespread evidence for weak engineering is inadequately recognized. The Lecture proposes a system for Performance-Based Risk-Informed Safe Design, Construction, Operation, and Closure of tailings storage facilities. It further urges the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) to support the proposed system and facilit...

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Section: Regulatory Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geotechnical Risk, Regulation, and Public Policy (Victor de Mello Lecture)

Morgenstern¹

2018

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“…En la zona del agua embalsada fue colocada una capa de lamas (fracción fina del relave) en forma espesada de acuerdo al proceso constructivo (e.g. Valenzuela, 2016). La estructura se apoya sobre un suelo base de 15 cm de espesor, correspondiente a una arena mal gradada con poca cantidad de finos.…”

Section: Diseño Y Construcción Del Modelo Experimentalunclassified

“…Por lo general, en el caso de presas de relaves, los estudios experimentales se realizan a través de ensayos puntuales, metodologías bajo condiciones ideales y acotado a un número de ensayos (e.g. Valenzuela, 2016;Valenzuela et al, 2016).…”

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Estudio experimental del efecto de la excitación basal y grado de saturación en las presiones de poros bajo una presa de tierra

Pastén

Salazar

2018

Obras y Proyectos

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“…TSF failure is not a new phenomenon and many such events have occurred around the world, as shown in Figure 1. Some of the critical failures are Mount Polley in Canada (Byrne et al, 2015), Merriespruit in South Africa (van Niekerk and Viljoen, 2005), Cieneguita mine in Mexico (Warden, 2018), Cerro Negro in Chile (Valenzuela, 2018), Rio Pomba Cataguases in Brazil (Oliveira and Kerbany, 2016), and Bento Rodrigues in Brazil (Segura et al, 2016), but there are many more.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling and analysis of the Brumadinho tailings disaster using advanced geospatial analytics

Atif

Cawood

Mahboob

2020

J. S. Afr. Inst. Min. Metall.

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On 25 January 2019, one of the most significant and deadliest tailings dam failures in history occurred at Brumadinho Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in Brazil. Twelve million cubic metres of tailings travelling at 120 km/h destroyed a total of 109 buildings, 36 belonging to Vale and 73 local residences. More than 259 people died. Some farmlands were wiped out and left under a sea of mud and tailings up to 8 m deep. Seven sections of local roads, one main road, and one railway bridge were severely damaged. In this research, a GIS-based tailings spill path (TSP) model was developed using the Python programming language for predicting the potential tailings flow path-before failure of the tailings storage facility (TSF). The pre-and post-failure satellite images of the Brumadinho disaster were processed and analysed to map the damaged infrastructure and to extract digital footprints of the tailings waste and flow path. This model was then compared with the post-failure satellite images. The TSP model is capable of generating the possible path of tailings flow and other important outputs like a processed digital elevation model (DEM), processed satellite image, down-path slope direction, and flow accumulation. The model was tested and validated for the Brumadinho and Samarco tailing disasters. The results are very promising and correlate well with the actual tailings spills. The methodology adopted in this research is robust, advanced, and can be applied to other tailings dams for hazard and risk assessment in case of their possible failure. The lack of high-resolution post-disaster satellite images and other topographical data were the main limitations of this research, which if available, could improve the modelling results.

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Design, construction, operation and the effect of fines content and permeability on the seismic performance of tailings sand dams in Chile

Cited by 26 publications

References 13 publications

Geotechnical Risk, Regulation, and Public Policy (Victor de Mello Lecture)

Geotechnical Risk, Regulation, and Public Policy (Victor de Mello Lecture)

Estudio experimental del efecto de la excitación basal y grado de saturación en las presiones de poros bajo una presa de tierra

Modelling and analysis of the Brumadinho tailings disaster using advanced geospatial analytics

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