Abstract
The degradation process of a municipal solid waste (MSW) sample from a landfill in Texas (TX), USA, was monitored in a large-scale laboratory landfill simulator for 1136 days. Simple shear testing was performed on reconstituted fresh and degraded waste specimens and an “undisturbed” degraded specimen. Shear resistance at 10% shear strain was defined as the shear strength in this study. The shear strength of the degraded waste was found to be 17–35% lower than the shear strength of the fresh waste. The effective friction angles of the fresh and degraded waste were 17–21° and 12–17°, respectively. The relatively low friction angles are due to the low compaction effort and density of the specimens. The shear strength of a specimen removed from the simulator in an “undisturbed” manner was found to be nearly identical to the shear strength of a reconstituted degraded specimen.
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Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Computer and Communication Foundations under Grant no. 1442773. ConeTec Investigations Ltd. and the ConeTec Education Foundation are acknowledged for their support to the Geotechnical Engineering Laboratories at the University of Michigan. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
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Datta, S., Fei, X., Zekkos, D. (2017). Large-Scale Experimental Assessment of the Effect of Degradation on Shear Strength of Municipal Solid Waste from a Texas Landfill. In: Sivakumar Babu, G., Reddy, K., De, A., Datta, M. (eds) Geoenvironmental Practices and Sustainability. Developments in Geotechnical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4077-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4077-1_2
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