Experimental Investigation of Creep Behavior of Bayer Red Mud in Guizhou Aluminum Factory's Red Mud Disposal Field

Long-term stability and safety of red mud disposal field is very important for the local residents’ life, which necessitates the knowledge of its creep behavior. Through the improved triaxial creep apparatus, a series of triaxial drained creep tests were conducted. The results indicate that the creep behavior of BRM is significant with confining and deviatoric stresses being critical factors. The soil creep occurs in two stages of transient creep and the steady creep, and a larger deviator stress will lead to a larger creep strain. The main failure mechanism of BRM is plastic shear, accompanied by a significant compression and ductile dilatancy. The Burgers model and the Singh–Mitchell model are used to describe the creep behavior of BRM, and four parameters of these two models are estimated by the nonlinear regression. The deformations predicted by this model are in reasonable agreement with experimental data.