The Aznalcóllar tailings dam failure moved the Spanish authorities to pay attention to tailings deposits. The Almagrera tailings dam holds one of the largest mining waste deposits in Andalucía. The dry closure of this dam has been detailed in this manuscript. Some serious difficulties had to be solved. Firstly, the dam had undergone up to five raisings before the closure operations started, and this process had not been properly documented. Secondly, the reservoir water was contaminated by the toxic tailings placed several metres below and, due to the high acidity of this water, the geotechnical characterization of the tailings deposit has been really challenging. Thirdly, the definition of the model itself has been a complex task due to the consideration of many phases and different hypotheses. In the finite element calculation, a constitutive model of perfect non-associated plasticity has been used for the dam and a soft soil creep model for the tailings. Next, it has been decided to decontaminate a closed mine by placing its abandoned material—Las Viñas fill—on top of the tailings deposit inside the reservoir. This operation generated important settlements on the tailings deposit. These settlements had to be accelerated by placing drainage wells to avoid the cracking of the final cap. The safety factor during the dry closure operations under dynamic loading was insufficient and a compacted rockfill reinforcement had to be laid on the downstream slope of the dam.
Project details
Title
Reference
BIA2010-20377
Funding Institution
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación]
Starting date
01/01/2011
Ending date
31/12/2014
Team
Main Researchers:
Researchers:
Castilla Freire, José
de Justo Moscardó, Enrique
Durand Neyra, Percy
Jesús Silva, Elisa
Morales Esteban, Antonio
Soriano Cuesta, Cristina
Vázquez Boza, Manuel
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