Discrete modeling of waste rock dumps stability under seismic loading

Copper mining produces significant amounts of associate waste, leading to the construction huge waste dumps in highly seismic zone Andes Mountains. To analyze stability these deposits, it is necessary characterize mechanical properties materials laboratory, which quite difficult due large size particles composing structures. In this study, global mine analyzed by means discrete element simulations. Three analogues upscaled particle distributions were generated from original PSD. The dump modeled using regular polygons. subject a loading applying velocity signal on boundary walls, was integrated directly accelerometers database. results show that failure structures produced infinite slope, for samples scaled factor until ten. This methodology encouraging analysis and forecasting runout distance after failure.