Characterisation of spoil materials to develop an equivalent spoil material for physical model tests

The engineering behaviour of spoil (overburden) needs to be explored either to understand the stability of reservoir slopes under various geological and climatic conditions or for the effective utilisation of reclaimed mines for sustainable infrastructure (e.g., onshore wind turbines). The spoil material is usually considered as highly heterogeneous, and samples collected from the same site can exhibit widely varying characteristics. In this study, spoil material from a mine site in the Czech Republic is characterised using in-situ field tests and laboratory tests. Cone penetration tests were performed in the field and sample cores were collected for laboratory testing. In the laboratory, the index and engineering characteristics of the spoil were evaluated. Given the measured characteristics and behaviour of the field spoil, an equivalent spoil is proposed to perform physical modelling tests using geotechnical centrifuge. This enables simulation of the field spoil behaviour in controlled centrifuge testing, from which other aspects of spoil (e.g. stability of spoil slopes, spoil-structure interaction) can be investigated.