Effect of Ponded Water Level on Stability of a Tailings Dam

Tailings dams are designed to handle large volumes of waste material from mining operations, thereby their stability has primary importance for sustainability of the mine environment. This paper investigates two-dimensional stability analysis of recently raised condition of Eti copper mine tailings dam; located in Kastamonu, Turkey. To evaluate stability of the tailings dam, the most critical cross section of the dam was analyzed with finite element method. Long-term stability analysis was performed with PHASE 2 v.8.01 finite element program and shear strength reduction method was utilized. Dam behavior was examined under static loading conditions by considering the different ponded water levels and slime-sand boundary positions. The main reason for this comparative parametric analysis is that it is hard to define ponded water level and exact location of boundary between slime-sand materials within the pond. it was found that increased ponded water level resulted in lower safety factor below the acceptable levels. The location of slime-sand boundary effected the results only when the ponded water level is high, otherwise the results were nearly the same.