Effect of Amplification on Seismic Stability of Tailings Dam

The stability of tailings dams in earthquakes prone areas has become a matter of increasing concern as seismic knowledge has advanced. For the seismic slope stability assessment of tailings dam, majority of current design methodologies rely on the use of pseudo-static approach. However, the crude estimate of finding approximate seismic accelerations makes the pseudo-static approach too conservative to adopt in the stability assessment. In this paper, horizontal slice method is used which considers the seismic inertia forces acting on the sliding wedge of the tailings dam by incorporating the effects of time, phase difference and amplification in shear and primary waves along with the horizontal and vertical seismic accelerations and other soil properties. Results are provided in the graphical form for the stability analysis of tailings dam.