ABSTRACT
Dam failures often involve the release of sediment-laden water to the downstream. In particular, tailings dams, which are constructed to impound mining wastes, can cause devastating damage when they fail. This paper presents an experimental study of the release of a water and sediment mixture due to a dam failure. One objective of the study was to investigate the hydrodynamics of tailings dam failure and generate datasets that can be used to verify and validate numerical models. The experimental setup consists of a channelized reservoir and an open floodplain, which are separated by a sliding gate. Transient flow characteristics, such as water-sediment mixture discharge, wave front velocity, free surface evolution, and failure geometry were measured by means of high-speed cameras for various combinations of water and sediment depth. Key hydrodynamic and morphological features of the transient flow of the water-sediment mixture created by a dam-break are presented.
