An Analysis of the Physical Mechanics Characteristics of a High-stacked Tailings Dam

From construction to operation, tailings have to go through a long period of time. With the passage of time, the early deposited tailings are gradually covered by the later deposited tailings, and the overburden on the accumulated tailings gradually increases. The different deposition time of tailings dam and the physical and mechanical characteristics of tailings in the sedimentary area are quite different, especially for high-stacked tailings dam. Therefore, it is very important to study the variation of physical and mechanical characteristics in the tailings of high-stacked tailings. In this paper, according to the early, middle and late operational stages, from 1989 to 2005, large scale drilling, in-situ testing and indoor testing were carried out on a certain upstream high pile tailings dam with a maximum thickness of 60m, 100m, and 125m. The physical and mechanical indexes of tailings were divided according to the time and place of deposition, in order to find out the changing laws of physical and mechanical characteristics of the tailings sand around 16 years ago. According to the changing law of the physical and mechanical characteristics of tailings, this paper puts forward the statistical tailings parameters according to the different deposition time and location of tailings, the research results provide reference for choosing the calculating parameters in designing and analyzing tailings dams. Its research results have been applied in the protection of the tailings dam, the tailings reservoir environment protection, and the safety hidden danger management of tailings reservoirs.