Tailings Dam Breach Resources
This website includes resources and background information related to tailings dam breach modelling.
Tailings Dam Breach Webinars
In partnership with the Australian Water School, we have developed a 2-part webinar dedicated to tailings dam breach modelling. Part 1 includes an overview of non-Newtonian flow characteristics and best practices for setting up tailings dam breach models. Presenters and panellists include the developers of TUFLOW, FLO-2D, FLOW-3D, and HEC-RAS software along with additional practitioners and dam safety experts. View the Part 1 webinar recording on the Australian Water School’s YouTube channel. Presenter details, Q&A transcripts, pdf files of the presentation material, and other webinar details are provided here.
Part 2 includes a deeper dive into the challenges of representing non-Newtonian fluids flow in hydraulic modelling simulations. Webinar details and registration links are here.
Software-Specific Resources
Following are additional TUFLOW, FLO-2D, HEC-RAS, and FLOW-3D materials referenced by our presenters during the webinars.
TUFLOW
For those undertaking tailings dam breach modelling with TUFLOW, Tutorial M10 on the TUFLOW wiki steps through the process with line-by-line coding instructions and video tutorials. Note that these models run in demo mode with no license required:
FLO-2D
For those undertaking tailings dam breach modelling with FLO-2D, visit the FLO-2D training page or view the video below covering the FLO-2D Tailings Dam Tool:
Additional FLO-2D resources:
HEC-RAS
For those undertaking tailings dam breach modelling with HEC-RAS, view Stanford Gibson’s lecture on estimating non-Newtonian parameters for HEC-RAS models. The HEC-RAS mud and debris user guide is also a valuable reference for HEC-RAS users.
FLOW-3D
For those undertaking tailings dam breach modelling with FLOW-3D, view the tailings tutorial video on the FLOW-3D YouTube channel. The paper “Advances in non-Newtonian dam break studies” by Moon et al (2019) addresses the use of 3D CFD models for tailings dam breach assessments.
Historical Dam Failure DatabaseS
Dr. Mayari Bernard-Garcia has compiled a searchable database of historical dam failures that includes 19 tailings dams. The database is available for free download here.
Additional databases and historical tailings dam failure events:
- Over 100 tailings dam failures since 1960 are compiled in this database by the World Information Service on Energy.
- World Mine Tailings Failures from 1915. This 2020 database documents over 200 mine tailings failures (including “minor” failures) with documentation of runout and cumulative release volumes.
- Database of breach and runout characteristics from historical tailings dam failures (12 breach events characterised by the University of British Columbia)
- A Comprehensive Global Database of Tailings Flows (63 characterised tailings flows screened from 350 historical waste impoundment failure incidents by Canadian Tailings Dam Breach Research)
- Greg Collecutt’s webinar presentation referenced the flow of molasses, a non-Newtonian fluid, in describing the characteristics of mine tailings. Although not a tailings dam failure, read about a “reservoir breach” that resulted in the fatal 1919 Great Molasses Flood here.
Dam Breach Courses
The Australian Water School’s 2-hour premium Dam Breach Essentials webinar is designed for practitioners who wish to undertake their own dam breach modelling exercises. Session recordings are available for on-demand registration here. Although these courses focus on water storage dam failures, an understanding of the principles and modelling approaches is considered pre-requisite for undertaking tailings dam failure assessments. The on-demand online HEC-RAS dam breach modelling course steps attendees through the process of developing, running, and troubleshooting a dam breach model using free HEC-RAS software. In this course, you will build a dam across the Grand Canyon and breach it to see if it floods Las Vegas! Register for the course here and complete at your own pace. Additional modules covering dam breach modelling with TUFLOW, FLO-2D, FLOW-3D, BREACHER, and other software will be added throughout 2024.
Previous webinars
View the expert ANCOLD panel discussion on tailings dam break below:
Following are additional dam breach-related webinars hosted by the Australian Water School:
Dam breaches are typically modelled with fixed bed and Newtonian assumptions for simplicity, but tailings dam breaches are highly dynamic events that are sometimes better represented with mobile boundary models and/or non-Newtonian assumptions. The webinars below provide some introductory material around sediment mobility in dynamic systems.
Tailings dam failure scenarios often require the assessment of Probable Maximum Precipitation and the Probable Maximum Flood. The webinars below provide some background guidance around PMP and PMF estimates along with the impacts of climate change on extreme event hydrology. Stay tuned for additional upcoming webinars covering climate change, including new Australian guidance that results in substantial changes to the prediction of extreme events that will be of particular interest to dam owners. Be sure to subscribe to receive notification when future webinars are scheduled, including our upcoming webinar Worlds Largest Floods (most of which were caused by landslide dam breach or glacial lake outburst floods)
First Principles
Technical Papers
- Brumadinho Papers
- Modelling the Brumadinho tailings dam failure (HR Wallingford HR Breach, EMBREA-MUD)
- Modelling the Brumadinho tailings dam failure (TUFLOW)
- Modelling the Brumadinho tailings dam failure (TELEMAC)
- Modelling the Brumadinho Tailings dam failure (HEC-RAS)
- ANCOLD Papers:
- Tailings Dams: Failure Impact Assessment Framework (Ind, Brand, and Ferrier, 2016)
- Tailings Dam Failures – Lessons Learned and Recommendations (Hongyu Li, 2017)
- Tailings Dams – How do we make them safer (Andy Hughes, 2017)
- Tailings Storage Failures: Impact on the industry, design, operation, and people (Singh et al., 2019)
- TSF Design and the Inclusion of Recovery Controls for the Event of a Tailings Dam Failure (Plunkett and Coffey, 2019)
- The Reliance on Engineering Judgement to Inform Tailings Dam Failure Impact Assessments (Brand and Ind, 2016)
- Benchmarking Papers
- A benchmarking study of four numerical runout models for the simulation of tailings flows (DAN3D, MADflow, FLO-2D, and FLOW-3D)
- A comparison between HEC-RAS and FLO-2D for tailings dam breach analyses (Scholtz and Chetty, 2021)
- Tutorial for tailings dam breach assessment with RiverFlow2D Mud and Tailings MT
Documentary
The clip below shows “Berenice” the motorbike. Paula Alves rode the motorbike through the town of Bento Rodrigues to warn its residence about a deadly mudflow from a tailings dam burst in 2015. To hear an interview with Paula, view the full documentary “Catastrophic Failure” on ABC here.
For more about how dam breach modelling can aid the effectiveness of early warning systems read the op-ed piece “Dammed if you don’t”
- Please contact us with any further queries regarding tailings dam breach assessment
