Mechanical-Based Properties of Mine Tailings for Static Liquefaction: Fid-Bau Portal

Mechanical-Based Properties of Mine Tailings for Static Liquefaction

Vergaray, Luis / Macedo, Jorge

Static liquefaction has been associated with numerous recent failures of tailings storage facilities (TSFs) around the world. These failures lead to devastating consequences for the environment and civil infrastructure and lead to the loss of human lives. In this study, we present trends for the response of mine tailings to monotonic loading considering (1) triaxial tests, (2) bender element tests, and (3) consolidation tests performed on mine tailings. These materials have a broad range of states (i.e., from very loose to dense states), a range of particle size distributions (i.e., from silty sand to almost pure silt mine tailings), and a broad range of compressibility. The trends are evaluated in the context of static liquefaction using critical state soil mechanics concepts considering different state definitions. In particular, we present trends for shear strength (residual and peak), state and brittleness soil indexes, and excess pore pressure indexes. Finally, static liquefaction screening indexes are proposed based on the observed trends, highlighting that static liquefaction is just another facet of soil behavior under monotonic loadings, and hence it should be explained under a mechanistic framework.