Location
San Diego, California
Presentation Date
27 May 2010, 4:30 pm - 6:20 pm
Abstract
The Geita gold mine, owned by AngloGold Ashanti, is located in the north west of Tanzania on the African Rift Belt in a seismically active. It is also located in an environmentally sensitive area as it is directly upslope of Lake Victoria. The Tailings Storage Facility was constructed as a side valley dam with its maximum design embankment elevation 1216m (i.e. 35m above ground level) and store capacity approximately 60 million tons of tailings. The feasibility of increasing this wall ultimately to 1246m (i.e. 65m above ground level) thereby increasing its capacity by 88.5 million tons, is the topic of this submission. The static liquefaction potential of the tailings was evaluated using an array of field and laboratory tests. It was found that the majority of the tailings displayed contractive behaviour, implying that should a failure of the outer wall occur a liquefaction type failure could result. The stability of the facility for the current and future raised geometries was investigated under static and dynamic loading conditions. Feasible solutions were evaluated in terms of their appropriateness. A viable solution using material readily available at this remote site was found and is currently under construction.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
5th International Conference on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics
Publisher
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2010 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Theron, Michelle; Wagener, Fritz; and Steenkamp, Phillip, "Seismic Stability Assessment the Raising of the Geita Tailings Storage Facility, Tanzania" (2010). International Conferences on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics. 32.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icrageesd/05icrageesd/session04b/32
Included in
Seismic Stability Assessment the Raising of the Geita Tailings Storage Facility, Tanzania
San Diego, California
The Geita gold mine, owned by AngloGold Ashanti, is located in the north west of Tanzania on the African Rift Belt in a seismically active. It is also located in an environmentally sensitive area as it is directly upslope of Lake Victoria. The Tailings Storage Facility was constructed as a side valley dam with its maximum design embankment elevation 1216m (i.e. 35m above ground level) and store capacity approximately 60 million tons of tailings. The feasibility of increasing this wall ultimately to 1246m (i.e. 65m above ground level) thereby increasing its capacity by 88.5 million tons, is the topic of this submission. The static liquefaction potential of the tailings was evaluated using an array of field and laboratory tests. It was found that the majority of the tailings displayed contractive behaviour, implying that should a failure of the outer wall occur a liquefaction type failure could result. The stability of the facility for the current and future raised geometries was investigated under static and dynamic loading conditions. Feasible solutions were evaluated in terms of their appropriateness. A viable solution using material readily available at this remote site was found and is currently under construction.
