To reveal the energy evolution law of open-pit mine dumps under seismic conditions and establish a criterion for slope instability, the cusp catastrophe theory was combined with the energy theory in open-pit mine dumps. This led to the development of a theoretical instability model for dissipated energy catastrophe, using slope dissipated energy as state variable. The south dump of Dasuji Molybdenum Mine was taken as the engineering background. FLAC3D software was used to analyze the evolution patterns of dissipated energy of four slope sections in the south dump and analyze the mutation characteristics. Based on these findings, the stacking scheme of the dump was optimized. The results show that most of the characteristic values of the dissipated energy for the south dump slope section are below zero, and the slope is prone to instability under seismic loading. The simulation results are consistent with the field situations. According to the evolution characteristics of the dissipated energy of the slope, an optimization scheme of "slope reinforcement+stacking optimization+monitoring and early warning" is proposed and applied to the south dump. The numerical simulation analysis and field monitoring verification of the optimized scheme show that the anti-deformation ability and overall stability of the slope are significantly improved after taking the optimization measures. The research results can provide references for the preventing dump slope instability.

Open-pit mine dumps  /  Seismic conditions  /  Energy evolution  /  Cusp catastrophe theory  /  Instability criterion  /  Optimization measures