International Conference on Chemical, Civil and Environment engineering (ICCEE'2012) March 24-25, 2012 Dubai

Stability of Fly Ash and Overbuden Material

as Back Filling in Opencast Mines A Case
Study
Singam Jayanthu, Sarat K. Das, and Sk. Md. Equeenuddin

There is also a report of mine back filling using fly ash at

Abstract Fly ash generates from the coal based thermal power Singrauli and Damoda opencast mines in India [3], [4]. Nearly
plant is of great concern due to its disposal. Therefore proper utilization 85% coal is produced from opencast mines in India, and it
of the fly ash is highly demanded. This paper demonstrates the results becomes important to handle this excessive overburden and
of laboratory investigation through numerical analysis using PLAXIS
planning for fly ash utilization in back filling of mines for
for understanding the stability of overburden dump formed by mixing
with 25% fly ash in opencast coal mine at Raigarh, India. It is observed eco-friendly development. In this paper an attempt has been
that two types of dumps with alternative layer of only fly ash and made to study the stability of overburden dump slope prepared
overburden material, and overburden mixed with fly ash (25%) are by mixing with 25% fly ash at Jindal Power Opencast Mine,
found to be stable with safety factor more than 1.2. Geometry of the Tamnar.
stable dump has total height of 120 m, 4 number of decks, individual
deck height of 30 m, and slope of each deck as 32. The dump formed
with alternate layer of overburden and mixture of fly ash is found stable
with a safety factor of 1.78 for the above geometry. Therefore, the
above geometry of the back filling material was recommended for the
above mine. As a part of reclamation with plantation, top soil of nearly
2 m thick was spread over the dump material in the field.

Keywords Dump, Fly ash, Opencast mine, Slope stability

I.

INTRODUCTION

OAL is the primary source of energy as nearly 70% of the

electricity is generated from coal-based power plants in
India. Increase in demand of coal supply by energy sector
leads to increase the amount of fly ash. Generation of fly ash
has increased from 40 million tones in the year of 1994 to 160
million tones in 200910, and it is expected to reach 700
million tones in the year 2031-32. However, its utilization is
nearly 50% of the production (2009-10), which is very less in
comparison to the major fly ash producing countries like
China, U.S.A. and Germany [1]. Therefore, much of the fly
ash remains unused and lying in the ash disposal sites. Fly ash
is mostly used in development of bricks, cement and concrete,
structural & land fill, road and embankment, wasteland
development and agriculture, and mine back filling. National
Thermal Power Corporation used about 60,000 tons of ash for
backfilling underground mines of Singareni Colliery
Company Limited, Southern India during 19992000 [2].

TABLE 1
LITHOLOGY OF THE AREA
Lithology
Thickness range(m)
Coal
2-3
Fine to coarse sandstone and
38-52
shale
Coal
4-4.5
Fine to medium sandstone with
4-6
shale bands
Coal
4-4.5
Fine to medium sandstone with
6-9
shale band
Coal
5-5.5

Jindal Power Opencast Coal Mine is a captive mine of 1000

MW thermal power plant of Jindal Power Limited and
generating nearly 16000 tons per day of fly ash. It is located at
Tamnar, Raigarh and bounded by 8329'40" to 8332'32"
longitudes and 2209'15" to 2205'44" latitude. Coalfield
belongs to Lower Gondwana Formation. Strata show gentle
southwesterly dipping of 2 to 5. The general strike of the
sediments is in NWSE Mine lies in almost a flat terrain with
small undulations. It is a part of IB River Mand - Korba
master basin lying within the Mahanadi graben. The area
consists of four seams of varying thickness, and general
litholog of the area is given in Table 1. Depth of mine working
is about 36 m with six benches of 6 m height. Ultimate depth of
the mine would be about 120 m.

Singam Jayanthu, Department of Mining Engineering, National Institute

of Technology, Rourkela-769008, Odisha, INDIA (Phone:+91-661-2462611;
fax: +91-661-2472926; e-mail: sjayanthu@nitrkl.ac.in).
Sarat K. Das, Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of
Technology, Rourkela-769008, Odisha, INDIA (e-mail: sarat@nitrkl.ac.in).
Sk. Md. Equeenuddin, Department of Mining Engineering, National
Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, Odisha, INDIA (e-mail:
equeen@nitrkl.ac.in).

II. METHODOLOGY
Various samples of overburden, soil and fly ash from the
dump site were collected from coal mine for finding out
various geotechnical properties through the laboratory study.
Laboratory geotechnical investigation was carried out for
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International Conference on Chemical, Civil and Environment engineering (ICCEE'2012) March 24-25, 2012 Dubai

determination of grain size distribution, specific gravity,

compaction characteristics (optimum moisture content and
maximum dry density), and shear strength characteristics
following Bureau of Indian standard (IS: 2720) methods. The
parameters like density, and shear parameters cohesion (C)
and angle of internal friction () (angle of repose) are
determined for both overburden and fly ash to analyze
stability of dumped slope.

1.75
1.74
1.73

Dry density(gm/cc)

1.72
1.71
1.70
1.69
1.68

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

1.67

The typical grain size distribution of the overburden and fly ash
is shown in Fig. 1. The particle size of the overburden ranges
between gravel, sand and silt. However, the grain size
distribution of fly ash and most of the fly ash corresponds to the
silt size. The specific gravity of the fly ash found to be very low
(average value of 2.15) in comparison to specific gravity of over
burden as 2.79. This low specific gravity of fly ash reduces the
total weight of the dumped slope and may help in increasing the
stability of the dumped slope.

1.66
1.65
7

10

11

12

13

14

15

Moisture content(%)

Fig. 2 Compaction characteristics of mixture of overburden and fly ash

(25%)
4.0

Cohesion = 41.79 kN/m2

= 28.5o

3.5

100

q (kg/cm2)

3.0

80

2.5

2.0

60
1.5
2.5

40

3.5

4.0

4.5

5.0

5.5

6.0

6.5

7.0

7.5

Fig. 3 Triaxial test results for overburden Sand stone

Flyash
Others: OB

20

4.0

0
0.01

3.0

p (kg/cm2)

0.1

10

100

cohesion = 89.64 kN/m2

= 22.92 o

3.5

Grain size(mm)

Fig. 1 Grain size distribution of typical overburden (OB) and fly ash
q (kg/cm2)

Percentage finer (%)

3.0

It was observed that the optimum moisture content (OMC)

of fly ash was 22.9% and maximum dry density (MDD) was
2.5
1.27 gm/cc. The MDD and OMC of the overburden were 1.87
gm/cc and 11.4% respectively. The compaction characteristic
of overburden with 25% fly ash is shown in Fig. 2. It was
2.0
observed that the OMC and MDD were 12.85% and 1.74
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
5.5
6.0
6.5
7.0
gm/cc respectively for the mixture. This reduction in MDD is
p (kg/cm2)
due to low MDD of fly ash. One-way this also helps in
Fig. 4: Triaxial test results for overburden and 25% fly ash
reducing the self-weight (driving force) of the slope.
The shear strength characteristics of the overburden (sand
stone) and mixture of fly ash with overburden are shown in The stability of dumped slope is analyzed by PLAXIS
Fig. 3 and 4. The shear parameters of the overburden and fly software, Version 9 using the above geotechnical parameters.
ash are also shown in Table 2. These properties are used for the PLAXIS is a finite element program for geotechnical
applications in which Mohr- Coloumb models are used to
stability analysis of dumped slope as described below.
simulate the behavior of dump material. Its implementation
consists of three stages, known as input stage, calculation stage
and post processing (curves) stage. Input stage contains model
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International Conference on Chemical, Civil and Environment engineering (ICCEE'2012) March 24-25, 2012 Dubai

design, assigning the material parameters, boundary conditions, properties of ash [5]. Overburden dump formed by mixing fly
loading and meshing. In the present analysis 15-node triangular ash is shown in Fig. 6.
element is considered for meshing which contains 12 stress
points. In PLAXIS, stresses and strains are calculated at
individual Gaussian integration points rather than at nodes. In
the calculation stage, analysis type is chosen such as Plastic,
dynamic, consolidation and phi-c reduction. The assigned loads
are activated in this stage and analyzed. In the post processing
stage, curves are plotted between various calculated parameters
such as load Vs displacement. In PLAXIS Phi-c reduction
method is used to compute factor of safety (FOS) for dump
slope stability.
The total multiplier Msf is used to define the value of the
dump material strength parameters at a given stage in the
analysis.

The safety factor is then defined as the value of M sf at

failure, provided that at failure more or less constant value is
obtained for a number of successive load steps.
Different trials were made with overburden and mixture of
overburden and fly ash with overall slope angle of 22. The
slope stability analysis was carried out for the geometry of 4
decks of 30 m height each, slope of individual deck 32. Here
two trials are presented. The Trial-1 was made with the
overburden and mixture of overburden with 25% fly ash.
Factor of safety obtained was 1.75. Trial-2 was made for the
dump prepared by alternate layer of overburden and mixture
of overburden and 25% fly ash along with the incorporation of
top soil of nearly 2 meter thickness at the top of the dump for
the reclamation purpose. The soil has cohesion of 78.2 kN/m2
and frictional angle of 20.5. Factor of safety obtained was
1.78 for Trial-2. and failure surface is shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 6 A view of the overburden dump at Jindal Power Limited,

Tamnar, Raigarh, India

IV. CONCLUSION
Dump slope formed by mixing overburden with 25% fly
ash was found to be stable. However, it is suggested that top
soil should be protected against rainfall by taking measures
like plantation, geosynthetics, or jute/coir reinforcement. The
compaction control may be periodically checked for proper
compaction of overburden and fly ash mixture.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks are due to the officers of Jindal Power Limited,
Tamnar, Raigarh for providing necessary financial and logistic
support for carrying out this work, and also to the National
Institute of Technology, Rourkela for allowing to do this
scientific study. Thanks are also due to Anirudha and Dinesh
of NIT, Rourkela for their help in preparation of the
manuscript.
REFERENCES
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[2]
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Fig. 5 Failure surface with factor of safety 1.78 for Trial 2

In the both the cases factor of safety is more than 1.2. This
indicates that at the end the dump after dozing of top soil
satisfies the minimum requirement and can be used. Increase
in cohesion of the mixture due to self-cementing properties of
fly ash generated from the combustion of sub-bituminous
coal. In presence of water, the fly ash will harden and get
strength over time. Mixing overburden with fly ash improves
the mechanical strength of dump as fly ash absorbs the
moisture from clay as well as substantially increases the
strength of the resultant mixture due to the pozzolanic

[4]

[5]

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