Investigating Drainage Boundary Effects in Multi-Lift Tailings Consolidation Using Geotechnical Centrifuge Physical Modelling

Publication Title
Investigating Drainage Boundary Effects in Multi-Lift Tailings Consolidation Using Geotechnical Centrifuge Physical Modelling

Abstract

The extraction and processing of oil sands produce significant volumes of fluid fine tailings, which are stored in tailings facilities requiring management for long-term stability and closure. The consolidation behaviour of tailings plays a crucial role in predicting settlement, excess pore pressure dissipation, and strength gain over time. Centrifuge physical modelling provides an effective method for studying this behaviour under field-representative stress-strain conditions. Physical models of tailings typically consider only one-way drainage to the surface. This study investigates the influence of drainage boundary conditions on tailings consolidation using geotechnical beam centrifuge testing. A customized setup was designed and added to a cylindrical consolidation cell to simulate double drainage by enabling flow from both the top and bottom boundaries of the tailings deposit. Two different tailing types were co-deposited using a multi-lift strategy in two identical cellsone with double drainage and the other with single drainage. Each lift was spun for the equivalent of one year under 100g, and spinning the final deposit was continued for an equivalent of about 100 years. Settlement was monitored using a high-speed camera and pore pressure was measured using embedded sensors. At the end of the test, the strength profile was determined in-flight using a miniature T-bar probe. Results indicated that double drainage conditions primarily affected early-stage consolidation compared to the single drainage. In addition to experiment, the settlement and compressibility data were used for back-analysis of permeability parameters. This study provides insight into tailings management and closure by considering the effects of drainage boundary conditions on tailings consolidation

Authors
Mahsa Shafaei Bajestani; Hela Idriss; Waleed Aboukhater; Gonzalo Zambrano Narvaez; Narges Gheisari; Givemore Sakuhuni; Reza Nik

Published In

11th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (ICPMG2026)

Theme

Session 3: Resilient geotechnical infrastructure