National Workshop on “Tailing Dam Safety”

Date: 12th –13th Oct 2023, Venue: Conference Hall, CBIP, New Delhi

Considerations for Effective Tailings

Dam Breach Analysis Study for Risk
Assessment

Dr. Ram Manohar Bishwal , Asst. Professor, Department of Mining Engineering

National Institute of Technology Rourkela
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 Presentation Outline
• Challenges in Management of Industrial Wastes • Existing Industry Best Practices

– Safety Issues – Key Parameters to consider

– Environmental & Sustainability Issues – Present limitations to breach analysis

• Risks involved with Tailings dam • Case Studies

– Failure Modes in Embankments
– Modelled Ash pond breach in India
– Downstream damages/ inundation mapping
– Summary & Key Points !

• Tailings Dam Breach Analysis • Developments in TSFs Governance

– How it is different from a typical slopes & hydro-dam – Indian Regulation (IBM, CPCB, MoEF&CC)

– Major challenges for breach modelling – GISTM/CDA/ICOLD Guidelines

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Management of Industrial Wastes // Challenges

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Tailings Dam Disaster // Global

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 Tailings Dam Disaster // India

Mean Dam Inundation Runout Vertical Fall

Predisposal and
Date Dam Type Site & Owner Breach Width Area (A in Distance Height (H in
trigger variables
(Bw in m) m2) (D in m) m)
January, Iron ore JSW Steel, Unscientific
20-30 1,00,000 700 25
2022 tailings Jharsuguda deposition
April 10, Reliance Power, Piping trigged by
Fly Ash Pond 50 7,90,000 7,700 33
2020 Singrauli human induced error
August 7,
Fly Ash Pond Essar, Mahan Heavy rainfall 50 4,00,000 1,700 10
2019

April 9, Tailing dam Failure of retaining/

Hindalco, Muri 600 80,000 850 11
2019 (Redmud) gabion wall.

August Vendata,
Fly Ash Pond Heavy rainfall 800 5,00,000 640 7
28, 2017 Jharsuguda

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 Tailings Dams // Overview
• The three principal designs are

– Downstream (D/S)

– Upstream (U/S)

– Centreline (C/L)

• All of the above are designated based on the

direction in which the embankment crest
moves in relation to the starter dyke at the
base of the embankment wall

• Modified centreline is another method rarely

used which is a combination between
upstream and centreline construction.

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 Tailings Dam // Structure

Generalized tailings pond cross section (Tailing management handbook, 2022) Paddock or cell type embankment dam (tailings.info)

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 Tailings Dams In India

Valley Fill + Raised type: The tailings dam was JSW BSPL, Jharsuguda // Iron TSFs (Single
constructed over a shallow depression (a cross-valley Staged Dam)
type impoundment) surrounded by uphill terrain.

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Tailings Dams In India

TATA Sukinda, Chromite Tailings In-pit Disposal Vedanta Sesa Goa // Iron Tailings in Low Lying area

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Tailing Storage Facilities // Failure Modes

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Failure Modes // Embankments

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Tailings Flow Behaviour

• Tailing can have flowable to non-flowable properties and based on that all types of dam breach
simulation shall be conducted.

• When tailings contain significant amount of solid material, it behaves like a slurry and the existing
hydrologic principles and formulation becomes ineffective, rather it follows the principle of rheology,
which can be governed by the solid-water dynamics at play.

• According to rheology, these material can be modelled either hyper-concentrated flow or Non-
Newtonian flow materials.
– Hyper-concentrated material: The material which is having both the fluvial and solid characteristics and the
volumetric concentration of greater than 30%.

– Non-Newtonian fluid: It is a fluid that does not follow Newton's law of viscosity, i.e., constant viscosity
independent of stress.

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Tailings Flow Behaviour

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Tailings Flow Behaviour
• Depending upon the tailing handling and management practice, it can have different solid
and water content varying from as low as 15 % solid content to a maximum of 85%.

• In addition,

– the available water level in a tailing pond,

– water balancing,

– dewatering activities and

– climatic condition

plays an important role in the overall role in the hydrologic and rheological behaviour of the deposited
tailings.

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Tailings Behaviour

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Tailings Dam vs Hydro Dams
• Tailings dams are often built over a very long period of time during the life of mines leading to less control over the
QA/QC procedure adopted.

– Many times tailing dams are inherited from the past owners with less technical data or due diligence, or

– -Even for a single owner, because of changing authority, contractor, consultant and even regulation over the period
of mine life, the design standards keep on changing

– Tailing dams are often built in stages either upstream or downstream

• Embankments are constructed generally with soil, coarse waste, cyclone sand, and residual materials from the mining
operations, which keeps on varying if the dam is constructed during different stages of mine life

• The management of tailings deposition, beach control, supernatant pond water management, control of phreatic water
level, etc. becomes very complex

• The cost of monitoring the tailings dam is high during mine operation and closure

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Tailing Dam Breach Analysis // Necessity

• The owner of surface tailings dams around many parts

of the world are routinely required to carry out dam-

break and run-out analyses with an aim to

• Estimate the potential consequences of tailings

dam failure

• Obtain EIA approval and consent to operate

• Use those for risk management and emergency

planning, TRAP & evacuation plan

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 Tailing Dam Breach Analysis // Fundamentals
• For the purpose of a hypothetical dam breach simulation, two industrial accepted practices are adopted as follows:

• Sunny day failure mode: internal erosion, piping, a strong earthquake, or another event might cause a dam

to break during normal operations, resulting in an overtopping or another incident.

• Rainy day failure mode: failure it is the dam failure resulting from natural floods due to heavy rains.

• Breach parameters to consider:

• Failure Location ? • Breach Volume ?

• Max. runout/inundation distance ? • Rate of flow ?

• Breach Event ? (precursors) • Peak Discharge Time ? (Flood/Breach Hydrograph)

• Breach Width?

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Tailing Dam Breach Analysis

Runout zone classification proposed by Rana et al. (2021)

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Dam Breach Modelling // Approaches
Empirical Approach Numerical Approach

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TSF Breach Modelling // Empirical Approaches

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TSF Breach Modelling // Empirical Approaches

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Tailings Flow Behaviour

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 Tailing Dam Breach Analysis // Challenges
• According to Martin et al. (2015), standardized procedures for conducting them do not yet exist in Australia, the USA or

other developed countries (Canadian Dam Association, 2014).

• Although many empirical equations derived from past case histories are being used to preliminarily estimate the runout

characteristics of tailing dams, these relationships are not well representative of all possible scenarios (Rico et al.

2008).

• As they are based on a limited number of historical tailings dam failures, and

• Also the flow behaviour is very local to site-specific parameters which cannot simply be generalized.

• The traditional dam breach and inundation studies use the principles of fluid mechanics to model discharge

mechanisms. This simplifying assumption leads to conservatively high flow velocities and longer run-out lengths (Martin

et al., 2015).

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Tailing Dam Breach Analysis // Challenges
• For a typical tailings storage with free water, fluid tailings, and tailings solids, there are currently no numerical

modelling tools available that can model all three phases simultaneously, as the mechanisms of interaction of

water/fluid and tailings are complex and unclear (Chen 2019).

• Rico et al. (2007) and Haumán et al. (2015) report that the volume of tailings mobilised during historic tailings dam

failures vary between 1% and 100% of the stored tailings.

• Several sources (Martin et al., 2015, Rico, 2007 and Haumán et al. 2015) recommend taking the fraction of released

tailings between 37 % to 40 % of the total impounded tailings volume as a first order estimate.

• Small et al. (2017) found that the initial mobilisation estimate of between 37 % to 40% should be adjusted

upwards or downwards by the analyst based on factors such as liquefaction potential, pool position and other site-

specific considerations.

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Tailing Dam Breach // Inundation Mapping
• On 25 January 2019, the
Brumadinho tailings dam in Brazil
suddenly failed.
• Releasing a mudflow over 10 m
deep comprising some 107 m3 of
mining waste which killed between
270 and 320 people.

Representative Example:

• Brumhadinho Tailing dam failure

• Downstream damage mapping

• Post-failure risk assessment.

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Tailings Dam Disaster // Brumadinho, Brazil

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/09/world/americas/brazil-dam-collapse.html

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 Dam Breach Analysis // Data Used
Input
# Remarks
Parameter Source
Tailing dam data (type of dam, embankment materials, size, height, area-volume,
01 Companies data Can be taken for report, public documents
slope, etc.)

Satellite data (SRTM data 30m Better 3m resolution data or better data can be
02 Site topography, morphology, Manning’s roughness number, hydrological data
resolution) gathered from Drone/Lidar mapping

Tailing physical properties (solid content, density, rheological properties, water

03 Lab test and historical records Field investigation if not available
volume)
Companies data and investigation report Companies data and investigation report (if not
04 Potential tailing failure modes and failure location
(For failures cases) failed)

Dam breach parameter (breach mode, breach height/width/side slope, breach Companies data and investigation report Companies data and investigation report (if not
05
formation time) (For failures cases) failed)

# Output or Result Tools to be used Procedure involved

01 Run-out distance Empirical equations
02 Average & Max. Flow velocity HEC-RAS
03 Volume of material released Empirical equation Empirical Assessment, Numerical modelling
04 Depth of deposition FLO-2D, HEC-RAS and Simulation
05 Downstream inundation path HEC-RAS
06 Downstream consequence ArcGIS

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 Ash/Tailings Pond Breach // Examples
Reliance Sasan Ash Pond, JSW Bhushan Iron Tailings Dam, ESSAR Mahan, India (2020)
Singrauli Jharsuguda Ash Pond Breach

Cause – Improper design to

Cause – Erroneous digging of embankment Cause – Unscientific planning &
control extreme rainfall events.
while maintenance. operation
Outcome –Five children were
Outcome –Six people killed and damaging 7 Outcome –1 person reported killed and
rescued and damage to
km of downstream river and paddy fields. 1 was missing.
downstream crops.
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Tailing Dam Breach Modelling // Essar Mahan

Actual Reported (NGT Report) Scenario Modelled

Model Validation: Essar Mahan

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Tailing Dam Breach Modelling

Actual Reported (NGT Report) Scenario Modelled

Model Validation: Reliance Sasan

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Tailing Dam Breach Modelling // Reliance Sasan

Reliance Sasan
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 Reliance’s Sasan ash pond breach

Reliance Sasan Ash Pond breach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQrgt_G3mzM

A representative model of tailing breach simulation (Mehdi et al, 2020)

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 Tailing Dam Breach Modelling// JSW Bhushan

TSF parameters

Dam Geometry & Tailing parameters Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3

Initial height of dam: 10 m 8m 6m
Bed slope: 0 %V:H 0° 0° 0°

Total unit weight: 20.71 kN/m3 20.71 kN/m3 20.71 kN/m3

Bingham yield strength: 1 kPa 1 kPa 1 kPa
Bingham plastic viscosity: 0.1 kPa.s 0.1 kPa.s 0.1 kPa.s

Runout Estimates
Model parameters Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3
Max. velocity 9.67 m/s 8.69 m/s 7.50 m/s
Avg. velocity 6.79 m/s 4.80 m/s 5.00 m/s
Max. run-out distance 380 m 240 m 120.0 m
Time to reach max. runout distance 56.0 seconds 50.0 seconds 24 seconds
Final freeze encountered at 152 sec 105 seconds 66.0 seconds

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Tailing Dam Breach Modelling // Results
Model Validation: Reliance Sasan

Model Validation: Essar Mahan

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 Tailings Governance
• Around 90% of big companies globally follow the design standards mandated by ICOLD, ANCOLD, and CDA, even
some Indian companies are known to follow the same design criterion.

• But, when it comes to design of tailing ponds or embankments design in India, the Indian Standard Practice of
Embankment Design or Dam Design codes such as IS 8826 (1978), IS 1893 (1984), IS: 11223 – 1985 etc. are followed,
which are not typically suitable for tailing ponds.

– Technical Bulletin No. 30, Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), 1995 and

– Fly Ash Management and Utilization Mission’, 2021, MoEF&CC

– Industrial & Hazardous Waste Management Act, 2016, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB),

– Guideline for Red Mud utilization and Management, 2021, CPCB

• Some widely accepted tailing dam design guidelines is formulated by

– Mining Association of Canada (MAC) and Canadian Dam Association (CDA)

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 Regulations in Tailing Managements
• For tailing dam owners. the only concerned regulation was issued back in 1995 by Indian Bureau of Mines. It was mostly
adopted from ICOLD.

• Since last 3 year, several revision in tailing dam design Standards, Guidelines and Regulations are modified across the
world.

• ICOLD Bulletins

• New Updates on tailing management practices across the

world:

• Implementation of GISTM (Global Industry Standard on

Tailings Management)

• Tailing Dam Breach Analysis (TDBA) Studies

• Evaluation of Tailing Liquefaction Potentials (ICOLD 2022)

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Tailing Dam Breach Analysis // CDA Guidelines

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Tailing Dam Breach Analysis // CDA Guidelines

Schematic of the Canadian Dam Association (CDA) Tailings Dam Breach Analysis (TDBA) classification system
for tailings dam failures (CDA, 2020).

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Summary & Key Points !
• Hypothetical breach analysis studies are made compulsory in Brazil and Canada (operation & permits)

• As of now, in majority of cases, the tailing dam breach analysis are done based on the principles and practices adopted
in hydro-dams. Leading to upper bound values (max. scenario) and that is not a bad thing.

• Breach analysis considering slurry/sedimentation flow is still evolving.

Need efficient
• Tailings breach study is very complex compared to a hydro dam breach. technical
understanding
• The uncertainties involved in Tailings dam breach analysis are huge. between the owner
and the consultants
– It’s like a trial & error approach to asses where, how and when the failure happen and for reasonably good
– Also forecast the flow behaviour based on several assumed conditions. breach modelling
outcome
• In India, doing a periodical dam breach analysis study for Hydro-dam is required.

• Companies adopting GISTM, ICMM, and CDA guidelines, are mandatorily required to do a hypothetical dam breach
scenario modelling.

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Thank you !
Question & Discussion

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