Investigations of the flume test and mini-slump test for thickened tailings disposal

[Truncated] Accurate prediction of the beach slope that results upon deposition is integral to realise the potential benefits of thickened tailings technology. Although there is notable improvement in understanding the deposition of thickened tailings, accurate beach slope prediction is still imprecise. A flume test which has been successfully used to predict the beach slope of conventional tailings for many years, has been found to produce unrealistically steeper slopes than those achieved in the field for thickened tailings. This different performance of flume tests for beach slope prediction between conventional and thickened tailings is generally attributed to the presence of a yield stress in thickened tailings, which is a key design parameter for thickened tailings disposal. Additionally, although there are a number of techniques to obtain the yield stress of thickened tailings, the mini-slump test has become the preferred method to quickly measure the yield stress in industry due to its simplicity. However the accuracy of mini-slump test is not very high due to some inherent defects.