ABSTRACT
The settlement and consolidation of mine tailings is a classical geotechnical problem, although mainly related to mine tailings engineering. Due to this specificity, commercial software have limitations on simulating the problem, therefore a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code was developed. The present paper presents this code, able to model mine tailings accretion, with the following main objectives: predict the void ratio at several depths, estimating its unit weight for properly evaluating the consolidation phenomena and calculate the pore pressure at any instant in order to compute the strength of the tailings. The code is based on the Finite Difference Method, with the particularity of using a unidimensional mesh with varying geometry. Apart from the detailed description of the software, the paper presents some applications to a tailings storage facility, comparing the in situ data with the results obtained by the developed code. Finally, limitations and future developments are discussed.
