The starter dam of a tailings pond, adopted sectional construction, might cause differential settlement, which will bring bad impact on the dam stability during use later. First, the deformation rate of starter dam was monitored by INSAR technology for 14 hours, which demonstrated that the nonuniform deformation rate was within the permissible security range. Secondly, by means of numerical calculation, simulating the real conditions of sequence of sectional construction, studying the distribution and the change relationship of the starter dam deformation along with the construction steps, it was concluded that the numerical calculation results mostly coincided with the monitoring results on both the whole settlement and uneven settlement distribution of the starter dam. At last, considering the real situation of tailings pond in the later use, the stability of the starter dam was analyzed under the fluid-structure interaction. The results show that the starter dam could remain stable during construction and later use.
Tailing pond, damming the valley mouth or compound, is used for storage of ore tailings or industrial waste, which is produced by metal and nonmetal mines after beneficiation. Tailing pond is a major hazard with high potential of man-made debris flow, once the dam breaks, it will cause great disaster follows by great losses. Operational tailing ponds are not only related to the mine's own safety and economic benefits, but also closely related to the lives and property of the downstream residents and their surrounding environment (Ma et al. 2010, Xie et al. 2009). The security and stability of starter Dam with Section Construction plays a vital role for the safe operation of tailing pond. Therefore, the starter tailing dam stability monitoring and analysis are of great significance.
