Experimental Study on Failure Model of Tailing Dam Overtopping under Heavy Rainfall

Unusual rainfall is the primary cause of the failure of the tailing dams, and overtopping is the most representative model of the tailing dam failure. The upstream tailing dam was selected as the research object to study the whole process of breach extension and the overtopping dam-failure mechanism under the full-scale rainfall condition. The results showed that the significant size grading phenomenon in the front, middle, and end of the tailing pond was obvious due to the flow separation effect, and its average particle diameter was D50. At different moments of rainfall, the height of the infiltration line at different positions of the dam body was different; at the rainfall of 3600 s, the height of the infiltration line lagged behind the height of the tailing pond, and this phenomenon from the tail of pond to the outside of the dam slope became more obvious. After the rainfall of 3600 s, the height of the infiltration line lagging behind the water level in the pond basically disappeared, and the rate of infiltration line rise kept pace with the rate of water level. The process of overtopping dam-failure experienced dam overtopping (gully erosion), formation of a multistepped small scarp, breach rapid expansion, formation of large scarp, and burst (fan-shaped formation). The width and depth of the breach showed a positive correlation, and the widening rate of the breach was 3 to 8 times of the deepening rate, especially in the middle of the dam break, widening behavior occupied the dominant factor. The shape of the dam body after failure was parabolic, and the dam body had obvious elevation changes. These results provide the theoretical guidance and engineering application value for improving the theory and early warning model of the upstream tailing dam.

Automated summary

Unusual rainfall is the main cause of tailing dam failure. In this study, the process of breach extension and the overtopping dam-failure mechanism of an upstream tailing dam under full-scale rainfall conditions were investigated. The results showed that the height of the infiltration line at different positions of the dam body varied with the rainfall duration. The process of overtopping dam-failure involved gully erosion, formation of a multistepped small scarp, breach rapid expansion, formation of large scarp, and burst. The width and depth of the breach were positively correlated, with the widening rate being higher than the deepening rate.