Undrained shear strength of existing tailings dams

The International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) Technical Committee TC221 on Tailings and Mine Waste organized an online debate/discussion on November 7th, 2022. This webinar about the evaluation of the undrained strength of tailings has been motivated by the results of the previous webinar on geotechnical aspects controlling the stability analysis of tailing dams. A pragmatic view of this issue is that there is a group of professionals working on tailings dams who believe that the evaluation of the undrained strength can be done through laboratory tests (eg, triaxial, simple shear, direct shear) in combination with field tests (eg, SCPTu, SPT, Vane Shear, Vs). On the other hand, there is a view that this topic is highly complex due to the high stratification, unsaturated conditions, granulometric differences, aging and variation in the void ratio, among other factors, that real tailings deposits present, so more research would be needed to develop more effective methodologies to take into account the complex reality of tailings. These two technical visions were presented during the webinar.

Please find the abstracts of the presentations in the file with this link.

The webinar has been recorded. The video can be started with this link.