Seismic Behavior of Tailings Dams in Chile

Abstract eng:
An extremely high and frequent seismic activity coincides in Chile with the existence of numerous tailings dams associated to the copper industry. In the country there is a history of tailings dam failures since the early XX century and up to today. Nevertheless since the decade of 1960 there have been a growing number of new large tailings dams that have had a very good performance even when subjected to very strong earthquakes. The paper summarizes the instructive history of failures as well as of successes of the newly designed tailings dams and particularly of the sand tailings dams. Different aspects of the main new sand tailings dams such as the design criteria, tailings sand characteristics under high confining stresses are discussed. These aspects are complemented with information on major earthquakes occurred in Chile in the last years, especially of El Maule Earthquake of Magnitude 8.8 of February 27, 2010 and the location of main tailings dams in the zones impacted by this earthquake. Finally, discussions are included with regard general seismic performance of tailings sand dams, seismic deformations, and seismic instrumentation including dams in operation and dams already inactive.

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