Response surface based probabilistic studies on static liquefaction failure of tailings dams
Response surface based probabilistic studies on static liquefaction failure of tailings dams
Tailings are a mixture of sand, silt, clay, metal, chemical reagents, and processing water, employed during metal extraction, usually stored in a Tailings Storage Facility retained by dams. Commonly, tailings are deposited in a loose saturated state for which, even a small perturbance in undrained condition can cause a progressive failure, often referred to as static liquefaction. In this work, stability evaluation and reliability analysis of tailings dams were investigated through the Response Surface Method. The response surface was developed based on finite element simulations with a simple dam geometry. The finite element simulation employed NorSand constitutive model that can capture softening behaviour. The developed response surface evaluates factor of safety based on the relative density of tailings layers and ground water level. Response surface and the first/second-order reliability methods were coupled to calculate the failure probability. The main outputs of such analyses are the failure probability and sensitivity factors for the various random variables that quantify the uncertainty in input parameters. The latter provides insight on how the uncertainty in relative density affects the probability of failure.
Sparsha Sinduri Nagula; Haoyuan Liu; Farrokh Nadim; Hans Petter Jostad; L. Piciullo
10th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE2023)
5. Probabilistic and inverse analysis
https://doi.org/10.53243/NUMGE2023-201
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