Assessment of Unsaturated Flow for a Large Coal Mine Waste Rock Pile

Abstract:

Some waste rock piles create some problems such as acid mine drainage (AMD), leaching of heavy metals, and slope stability concerns. These problems are related to the flow of water through the rock pile. Understanding the physical and hydrological properties of the waste rock piles is important for flow and solute transport modeling. To study physical properties and unsaturated flow in rock pile, some soil samples were collected from surface of the large coal waste rock pile and tested for some common geotechnical parameters in the laboratory. The results showed that materials are so heterogeneous and highly supporting segregation and natural gravity sorting of waste rock materials from top to toe. Numerical simulation was performed to investigate the unsaturated flow conditions in the pile. The results obtained showed that pile is unable to fully saturate and drain during the simulated period. It was also found that high evaporation and also coarse grain nature of waste rock materials results holding few amounts of water in the system.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volumes 955-959)
• Pages: 1179-1183
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.955-959.1179
• Online since: June 2014
• Authors: Hajizadeh Namaghi Hadi, Ming Kun Luo*, Sheng Li
• Keywords: Hydrological Properties, Physical Properties, Unsaturated Water Flow, Waste Rock Pile

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