Cut Slope Design in an Open Pit wWithin a Historic

Tailings Storage Facility

J. Ale1*, J. McCord2, J. Martin3, C. Luna4, C. Jimenez5 and B. Wang6
1. Geotechnical Department/Division Environment & Infrastructure Solutions/Wood, Peru
2. Geotechnical Department/Division Environment & Infrastructure Solutions/Wood, Peru
3. Geotechnical Department/Division Environment & Infrastructure Solutions/Wood, Peru
4. Geotechnical Department/Division Environment & Infrastructure Solutions/Wood, Peru
5. Geotechnical Department/Division Environment & Infrastructure Solutions/Wood,Minsur,
Peru
6. Geotechnical Department/Division Environment & Infrastructure Solutions/Wood, Canada

ABSTRACT
As a result of new metallurgical processing techniques, an old tailings storage facility located in the
southern Andes of Peru has acquired economic importance. For this reason, it is proposedplanned
to redevelop the mine with a new open pit that will cut through design a mining plan within the
tailings storage facility. The tailings will also be reprocessed.
The tailings storage facility is located on the glacial valley, with a tailings thickness of up to 50 m.
The tailings dam is composed of coarse tailings (silty sands), and has been built following the
raisinggrowing method of upstream embankment. Upstream of the dam, the stored material is
mostly composed of fine tailings (low plasticity silt and clay). The initial groundwater level is at 10
meters depth, which means that most of tailings are saturated.
The proposed mining method is the excavation by conventional equipment (excavators) and
transport by trucks. Therefore, the tailings material to be excavated must have a water content that
allows the execution of the work. It has proposed a dewatering plan within the tailings storage
facility, to thereby ensure the workability of the tailings material. The tailings dewatering modeling
was conducted considering the unsaturated behavior of the hydraulic properties.
This paper presents the geotechnical design of the cut slopes in tailings at different water content
(which ranges from 3% to 25% after dewatering). To perform this characterization, a field
geotechnical investigation and a laboratory program were conducted. The field investigation was
composed of: drillings, SPT, CPT, pumping wells, and Shelby sampling. Laboratory tests program
consisted of: soil-water characteristic curves, grain size by sedimentation, specific gravity, and
triaxial compression tests. The unsaturated behavior (soil-water characteristic curve) was obtained
from two ways: laboratory tests, and correlations from the global grain size of the tailings material.
Finally, shear strength parameters were obtained for different degrees of saturation of the tailings
used for the design of the mining plan cut slopes.

1
*J. Ale: Geotechnical Department/Division Environment & Infrastructure Solutions/Wood, Senior
Geotechnical Engineer, Lima 27 - Peru. Phone: +511 6223555. Email: jose.ale@woodplc.com