2006/03/10 by Eduardo Alonso Pérez de Ágreda, Antonio Gens · 31 citations
Environmental Science · Engineering · #Landslides and related hazards #Dam Engineering and Safety #Geotechnical Engineering and Analysis #Geotechnical engineering #Acceleration #Tailings dam #Dam failure #Tailings #Geology #Liquefaction #Displacement (psychology) #Motion (physics) #Cliff #Engineering #Materials science #Physics
paper · open access · doi:10.1680/geot.2006.56.3.203
published in Géotechnique 56(3), 203-210 (ICE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2006/03/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
The motion of the Aznalcóllar dam slide, after the initiation of the failure, is examined in the paper. The moving mass remained essentially rigid, and Newton's second law provides the basic equation to determine the resulting dam displacement, velocity and acceleration. Resisting forces have been derived from a previous analysis of the conditions leading to failure. Pore water pressures induced by the forward motion of the dam are approximated as an undrained loading of the clay. Driving forces and their evolution in time derive from the liquefaction of tailings and the condition of constant volume of liquefied tailings pushing the moving dam forward. The stable ‘cliff’ left by the motion inside the tailings lagoon supports this hypothesis. The model is able to reproduce closely the distance travelled by the dam. It shows a low sensitivity with respect to reasonable changes of the main parameters. The model computes that the slide motion lasted about 15 s, and that the maximum acceleration experienced by the dam was 0·14g.