A series of major tailings dam break events have been recorded across the world in recent years. A
breach in the impounding structure of a Tailings Storage Facilities (TSF) can lead to catastrophic
environmental, social and economic impacts and potentially result in the loss of human lives.
Unlike a water dam break, the flow of the released tailings from a TSF will be mostly dominated by
the non-Newtonian behaviors of the tailings slurry that is determined by the hyper-concentrated
solids effect and rheological characteristics of the material. Modelling tailings flow as water
(Newtonian flow) would lead to both unrealistically larger inundation areas, shallower depth of flow
and higher velocities which may consequently result in unrealistic consequence category
assessments.
In addition to the rheological parameters, the estimation of released tailings volume is another crucial
component of the tailings dam break analysis. Most of the existing methods currently used for the
estimation of the tailings released volume are based on empirical correlations which do not take into
account the important site-specific parameters such as embankment type, deposited tailings in-situ
density, liquefaction potential and post-liquified residual strength.
In the methodology proposed in this paper, the tailings released volume is estimated by utilizing the
site-specific parameters such as deposited tailings in-situ density and post-liquefied shear strength
ratio. The tailings solids effect and rheological properties have also been applied to the dam break
analysis to create a comprehensive numerical model that integrates the non-Newtonian properties of
the tailings along with the Newtonian behavior of water release from a TSF in a hypothetical failure
scenario. A case study is then presented to illustrate the difference between the results from a
Newtonian-only flow simulation, an empirical tailing released volume estimation, and the simulation
undertaken based on the non-Newtonian flow behavior using site-specific parameters for the given
scenario.