Investigation on the Bearing Capacity Estimation of the High‐Step Dumping Site Foundation in Open‐Pit Coal Mines

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One important determinant of the safety and load‐bearing ability of the disposal area at an open‐pit coal mine’s external dumping site is the foundation’s bearing capacity. For open‐pit coal mines to operate effectively, this capacity must be calculated precisely. The Terzaghi’s bearing capacity theory is frequently employed for these computations because there is currently no recognized, trustworthy technique for figuring out the foundation’s ultimate bearing capacity at the disposal site. This gap can be filled by developing a new method that takes into account the inclination limit of the inclined strip and the various parameters of the dumping site. The inclined strip method, derived from the sloping strip approach proposed by Donald and Chen within the upper bound limit analysis framework, is employed to consider the effect of foundation inclination. The Black Mountain open‐pit mine in Xinjiang was used as a case study for this approach. The findings show that, in comparison to the study’s methodology, the Terzaghi’s bearing capacity theory predicts the upper limit of the inclined strip with a more conservative estimate. The reliability of this method was also confirmed using FLAC3D, a software for finite difference analysis. The final bearing capacity estimates agreed with the P–S curves derived from monitoring sites, and numerical simulations of the critical slip surface and foundation stability produced findings in line with the inclined strip upper limit approach. These results demonstrate how changes in the top slope length (L) affect the foundation’s final bearing capacity and validate the viability of the suggested approach.