A simple solution for drainage through a 2-dimensional hydraulic fill stope

Inadequate drainage has been attributed as the major cause of failure of several hydraulic fill stopes that have claimed lives. Therefore it is necessary to be able to predict the pore water pressure developments and flow rates throughout the filling operation. There are computer programmes that can simulate the hydraulic filling of a mine stope and enable computations of the pore water pressures, flow rates and hydraulic gradients at any time. This paper presents a simple analytical solution for estimating the maximum pore water pressure within the stope, flow rate and the hydraulic gradients at the entry and exit. The proposed solutions are verified against solutions derived from FLAC, a finite difference software, and the agreement is found to be excellent. A simple equation for the hydraulic gradient at the top of the stope, as a function of the height of water within the fill, is also presented