摘要：A tailing dam accident can cause serious ecologicaldisaster and property loss. Simulation of a tailing dam accident in advanceis useful for understanding the tailing flow characteristics and assessingthe possible extension of the impact area. In this paper, athree-dimensional (3-D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach wasproposed for reasonably and quickly predicting the flow routing and impactarea of mud flow from a dam failure across 3-D terrain. The Navier–Stokesequations and the Bingham–Papanastasiou rheology model were employed as thegoverning equations and the constitutive model, respectively, and solvednumerically in the finite volume method (FVM) scheme. The volume-of-fluid(VOF) method was used to track the interface between the tailings and air.The accuracy of the CFD model and the chosen numerical algorithm werevalidated using an analytical solution of the channel flow problem and alaboratory experiment on the dam-break problem reported in the literature.In each issue, the obtained results were very close to the analyticalsolutions or experimental values. The proposed approach was then applied tosimulate two scenarios of tailing dam failures, one of which was theFeijão tailing dam that failed on 25 January 2019, and the simulatedrouting coincided well with the in situ investigation. Therefore, theproposed approach does well in simulating the flow phenomenon of tailingsafter a dam break, and the numerical results can be used for early warningof disasters and emergency response.
