BRUMADINHO TAILING DAM BREAK BACK CALCULATION USING THE VOLEMY SALM MODEL

Citação

Resumo

The Dam Failure occurred on Córrego do Feijão Mining, near to Brumadinho, in 2019 was the biggest dam accident in Brazil, with over than 300 fatalities. The dam break simulation using the consagrated hidraulic theories and models is widely and successfully applied for water reservoirs. Acctually the most part of this tailing dam break analysis is done ajusting the viscous parametres for the flow, appling the same models used to simulate water flow. To simulate natural debris flow events, experience shows that these models have several restrictions to reproduce this flows, due the multiphase nature of the flow responsible for a complex interaction process inside the flow. Tailings are biphasic material, composed by the fluid and the solid part, composed mainly by fine material, similar to a natural mudflow. Voelmy Salm model was created for snow avalanche simulations, and adapted latter for debris flow simulation. This model has been successfully applied to simulate mud and debris flow. In this paper a Volemy Salm model where used to back calculate the Brumadinho Dam Break. High accurate Digital terrain model (LIDAR) from before and after the event where used to verify the deposit/eroded zones, and then it was used as a control parameter for simulations. Real mean velocities where taken by measured times from the flow along its path, but data was only available on the flow initiation zone. Based on the available control parameters reasonable results are found and indicate that the debris flow simulation methodology can be successfully adopted for tailing dam break analysis. Best fit results shown the use of Voelmy Salm model dry friction coefficient (µ) equal to 0,02 and turbulent friction coefficient (ξ) equal to 400 for a Brumadinho Dam Break back analysis.