Dewatering regime in flooded open pit and its impact on slope stability

Abstract

Being exposed to different atmospheric conditions open pit mines may suffer catastrophes such as floods. Tending to restore production to its previous state intense dewatering is required. In this paper impact of dewatering regime on slope stability is analyzed. Cases where dewatering was delayed for 7, 30, 60 and 90 days after flooding were analyzed. For each of these cases we analyzed different dewatering regimes. It was shown that delayed dewatering requires less intense water pumping in order to keep slopes stable, and vice versa, in case of the sooner beginning of dewatering, water pumping may be more intense.

Keywords

• slope stability
• dewatering
• flood