An Analysis of the Use of Mining Waste from Coal Mines in Flood and Road Embankments

This article presents the possibilities of using mining waste from hard coal mines in flood and road embankments. For this reason, the management of mining waste is a very important issue. It was proposed to use mining waste to build flood embankments that also serve as a road. The results of research and numerical analyses using the Finite Element Method (FEM) are presented for the example of mining waste from the Sobieski Mining Plant. The results of testing the physical and mechanical properties of the waste, waste with the addition of 8% Portland cement and waste with the addition of 8% metallurgical cement are presented. The results of laboratory tests showed better physical and mechanical properties for mining waste with the addition of metallurgical cement. The results of the numerical analyses showed that no flood embankment built of mining waste alone retained the required stability coefficient according to Polish requirements (FoS > 1.3) at the highest flood wave. The best result is achieved by the flood embankment in the variant—the road being on the side of the air slope, built from mining waste with the addition of 8% metallurgical cement; this has the highest stability coefficient, both without a vehicle load (FoS = 1.72) and with a vehicle load (FoS = 1.67).