A Case Study of Las Palmas Tailings Dam Failure

Abstract

The increasing demand for minerals and their subsequent mining causes tailings to be produced in large amounts. Hence, tailings dams have increased in number as well as height to accommodate more storage capacity. Failure of these structures is dangerous with respect to toxic exposure, landslides, liquefaction, etc. In this study, the possible failure mechanisms of the Las Palmas tailings dam, which failed following the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake, have been examined. Numerical simulation of the dam is carried out using the GeoStudio package to assess the condition of the dam during this seismic event and a pseudo-static analysis is carried out. The strong ground motion of the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake recorded at three of the stations near the dam site was used as input since there is no record available at the tailings dam site. Slope stability analysis is performed to understand the possible failure mechanism. The Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion is used to define the material properties. Furthermore, the simulation results are compared with the final dam failure scenario.