Seepage Analysis of a Multilayer Waste Slope considering the Spatial and Temporal Domains of Permeability

Abstract

Landfilled municipal solid waste has evident heterogeneity, and clogging of the drainage layer can easily happen during operation of the landfill. These two factors significantly influence the distribution of leachate in a landfill. Herein, the distribution of waste permeability in the spatial and temporal domains was analyzed. Then, changes to the drainage-layer permeability in the temporal domain were fitted to these data. A simple model of multilayer waste slope was established combining the finite element software and a user subroutine. Herewith, changes of permeability in the waste and drainage layers were simulated, such that the heterogeneity of waste and the process of clogging of the drainage layer could be simulated. Then, the leachate distributions and transport conditions of nine schemes for landfill were analyzed. The results indicated that the distribution curve of waste-saturated permeability follows a logarithmic relation in the vertical direction, and the distribution curve of fresh-waste-saturated permeability follows a polynomial relation in time. After each landfill is worked for a few years, the drainage layer always encounters clogging problems of some kind and its permeability decreases by one to five orders of magnitude. Through numerical models, the simulation results of the permeability distribution in the spatial and temporal domains were found satisfactory. When the permeability distributions were layered in the buried depth, pore pressures and leachate levels are smaller than the logarithmic distributions. During the process of degradation, the pore pressures and leachate levels are increased slightly under the consideration of the polynomial distribution of waste permeability in time. With clogging of the permeability of the drainage layer, the pore pressures and leachate levels of landfill were found to be increasing gradually. To obtain results closer to that of actual situations, corresponding models should be established and analyzed based on a range of permeability, waste degradation rate, and degree of clogging.