Blackshaw, J. (1951). "Mill tailings disposal at Hollinger," Bull. Canadian Inst. Min.

Met., (June), 403-411.

Blight, G. (1988). "Some less familiar aspects of hydraulic fill structures." Hydraulic
fill structures; Geotech. Spec. Pub. No. 21, D.Van Zyl and S. Vick, eds., ASCE,
New York, N.Y., 1000-1027.
Blight, G., and Steffen, O. (1979). "Geotechnics of gold mine waste disposal."
Current geotechnical practice in mine waste disposal, ASCE, New York, N.Y.,
1-52.
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Eckersley, D. (1990). "Instrumented laboratory flowslides." Geotechnique, London,

England, 40(3), 489-502.
Kealy, C , and Soderberg, R. (1969). "Design of dams for mill tailings." IC8410,
U.S. Bureau of Mines, Washington, D.C.
Lenhart, W. (1950). "Control of tailings from washing plants," Rock Products, (July),
72-80.
Mac Iver, B. (1961). "How the soils engineer can help the mill man in the construction
of proper tailings dams." Engrg. and Min. J., (May), 85-90.
Schiffman, R., Vick, S., and Gibson, R. (1988). "Behavior and properties of hy-
draulic fills." Hydraulic fill structures; Geotech. Spec. Pub. No. 21, D. Van Zyl
and S. Vick, eds., ASCE, New York, N.Y., 166-202.

Closure by Charles C. Ladd,3 Fellow, ASCE

The author welcomes the discussion as an extremely important supple-

ment to the paper for persons responsible for the design and operation of
upstream tailings dams. Vick provides historical perspective that explains
why effective stress analyses (ESA), which inherently assume a slow drained
failure, have generally provided acceptable predictions of tailings dam sta-
bility. The discusser then clearly describes conditions that have resulted in
unsatisfactory performance, i.e., the first three categories in Table 8. Com-
ments on these three conditions follow.

CATEGORY 1

The category of undrained shearing of "soft" cohesive slimes that underlie

the slope of the dam should use an undrained strength analysis (USA), as
illustrated in section 3.6 of the paper and also by Vick in Fig. 29.

CATEGORY 2

For undrained shearing of "soft" foundation soils, the case history de-
scribed by Vick in Fig. 28 provides an excellent example of how a very
simple USA can readily identify a severe stability problem. In addition, the
drained and undrained factors of safety presented in Fig. 28(£>) agree well
with those predicted via (10) for a horizontal failure surface; that is

FS(ESA) _ tan «,' _ 0.-53 = 2_2 (2Q)

FS(USA) / Cu \ 0.24

compared to 2.1 and 2.4 for surfaces A and B , respectively.

-'Prof, of Civ. Engrg., Massachusetts Inst, of Tech., Cambridge, MA 02139.

1288

J. Geotech. Engrg. 1992.118:1288-1289.

 CATEGORY 3

For inadequate seepage control within the sand tailings on the slope of
the dam Vick references the important experimental results by Eckersley
(1990). They show that failures initiated under static, drained conditions
within saturated cohesionless soils can produce undrained flow-slides with
large positive shear-induced pore pressures. Vick correctly recommends
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by PENN STATE UNIV on 08/11/14. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

proper seepage control to avoid this type of failure.

Vick's concluding paragraph clearly identifies the inherent flaw in assum-
ing that slow filling rates per se justify the use of drained strength (ESA)
analyses for tailings dams. If undrained failures can be triggered under static,
drained conditions in cohesionless soils, as demonstrated by Eckersley (1990),
they most certainly can occur in cohesive soils, even when the load-induced
excess pore pressures are zero.

REVISED CAM-CLAY M O D E L 3
Discussion by Jian Chu4

The authors are commended for presenting an interesting study on the

Cam-clay model. There are only a few points that the writer would like to
raise for discussion.
The arguments used by the authors in supporting their view that "theo-
retically every plastic flow should obey the normality rule" cannot be 100%
accepted by the writer. The associated flow rule may be the most desirable
and numerically convenient form of plastic flow, but that does not imply
that it is the only type of plastic flow that is permissible by the laws of
thermodynamics. Even though the problem in identifying the true yielding
function may make the experimental examination of the flow rule a difficult
task, it has been shown theoretically by Houlsby (1981) that nonassociated
flow behavior can be derived from a set of thermodynamic theory. It needs
to be mentioned that even the modified Cam-clay model can be derived
from thermomechanics (Houlsby 1981).
"[S]ome additional stresses" have been introduced by the authors, "which
are mobilized internally without causing any externally observable strains."
The writer wonders how the "additional stresses" can be fitted into the
framework of the effective stress principle.
The behavior of q/p' > M for overconsolidated clay is quite explainable.
For wet clay, that is, the clay looser than the critical state, the typical
deformation behavior would be in volumetric compression until the critical
state is reached. Under such a condition the stress ratio at failure will not
exceed the stress ratio at the critical state. However, for overconsolidated
clay the soil can be in a dry state, that is, a denser state than the critical
state. A soil sample in a dry state can be in dilation—that is, reaching a
"June, 1991, Vol. 117, No. 6, by B. R. Srinivasa Murthy, A. Vatsala, and T. S.
Nagaraj (Paper 25865).
4
Res. Fellow, School of Civ. and Struct. Engrg., Nanyang Tech. Univ., Nanyang
Ave., Singapore 2263.
1289

J. Geotech. Engrg. 1992.118:1288-1289.