Overtopping Failure of a Reinforced Tailings Dam: Laboratory Investigation and Forecasting Model of Dam Failure

Overtopping failure of reinforced tailings dam may cause significant damage to theenvironment and even loss of life. In order to investigate the feature of overtopping of the reinforcedtailings dam, which has rarely appeared in the literature, the displacement, the phreatic level and theinternal stress of dam during overtopping were measured by a series of physical model tests. Thisstudy conclusively showed that, as the number of reinforcement layers increased, the anti-erosioncapacity of tailings dam was notably improved. It could be supported by the change of the dimensionof dam breach, the reduction of stress loss rate, and the rise of phreatic level from the tests. Based onthe erosion principle, a mathematical model was proposed to predict the width of the tailings dambreach, considering the number of reinforcement layers. This research provided a framework for theexploration of the overtopping erosion of reinforced tailings dam, and all presented expressions couldbe applied to predict the development of breach during overtopping.