The Influence of Co-Stacking Waste Rock and Tailings on the Saturation Line of Tailings Dams

The large-scale development of mineral resources has led to a sharp increase in the amount of tailings and waste rock accumulated in tailings ponds and waste disposal sites, forming a large number of high-risk tailings dams and high-pile waste disposal sites. In recent years, frequent incidents of tailings dam breaches and landslides in high-pile dumping sites have posed a serious threat to the lives and property of downstream residential areas. Therefore, studying the collaborative storage technology of waste rock and tailings is of great significance. By conducting physical model experiments on tailings dams of a similar scale and using the SEEP/W module in GeoStudio 2022.1 software for numerical simulation, the influence of the built-in waste-rock inclusions on the permeability characteristics of the dam body and the depth of the saturation line is analyzed. The results showed that the seepage flow increased with the decrease in fine particle content in the waste-rock inclusions, with the highest seepage flow in the C-grade waste-rock inclusions and the most significant decrease in the saturation line, and the seepage volume decreased with the increase in the spacing between waste-rock inclusions. The depth of the saturation line is negatively correlated with the distance between the centers of the waste-rock inclusions; that is, the smaller the distance (200 mm), the greater the depth of the saturation line. The research results can provide a reference for ensuring the safety and stability analysis of tailings dams.