Abstract
In order to determine the cyclic strength or resistance to liquefaction of tailings materials, six tailings sampled from different tailings dam sites in Chile and Japan plus one artificially ground quartz powder were tested in the laboratory using the cyclic triaxial shear test apparatus. Coarse grained materials and fine grained materials were sampled separately from laminated profiles of deposits at each tailings dam site and the tests were conducted each on these two kinds of materials. The cyclic triaxial test results showed that for the coarse grained tailings called sand, the cyclic strength was a little lower than that for the normally encountered clean sands having almost identical grain size characteristics. For the fine grained tailings called slime, the cyclic strength was shown to depend largely on the consistency characteristics. The fine grained tailings which are identified as being nonplastic showed much smaller cyclic strength than the tailings having a plasticity index on the order of 15 to 20.
