Penstock towers are intake structures built within tailings storage facilities to manage water during operation.
This study aims to understand how tailings consolidation and its subsequent drag-down forces affects the stresses acting on the tower throughout its life span. A reinforced concrete penstock tower and the surrounding tailings is modelled using an axisymmetric finite element model with Plaxis 2D in stages.
The potential beneficial effect of coating a portion of the penstock tower with bitumen is analysed. The uncertainty in the model parameters is addressed by a probabilistic analysis using the Point Estimate Method (PEM) on the relevant strength/stiffness parameters and on permeability to compute the probability of exceeding the ultimate design axial stress of the tower.
The most influencing parameter resulted K0, the horizontal-to-vertical stress ratio in the primary compression stress path.
