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SIMULATION OF DIFFERENTIAL SETTLEMENTS OF CLAY BASED ENGINEERED BARRIER SYSTEMS IN A GEOCENTRIFUGE

B .V.S Vi sw a n a dh a m 1, S . Ra je sh 2 & S . S . S eng u p ta 3 1. Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400 076, India. Email: viswam@civil.iitb.ac.in (Corresponding Author) 2. Research Scholar, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai-400 076, India. Email: rajesh.s@iitb.ac.in 3. Formerly Post-Graduate Student, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai-400 076, India

INTRODUCTION With increasing industrialization and urbanization, the quantity of waste has increased immensely. Depending on source of generation, some waste may degrade into harmless product whereas others may be non-degradable and hazardous. Wastes that are generated in large volumes can be reduced or recycled but finally it has to be deposited over large land areas. Landfills are simple, economic and extensively researched disposal system; hence used all over the world. Nearly all currently used landfill incorporate a barrier within the top and the base lining system. The barrier layer is intended to minimize infiltration into the waste and percolation from the waste to groundwater. Clay-rich soils are used in Compacted Clay Liners (CCL) due to its low permeability characteristics which are widely used as hydraulic barriers in waste containment facilities. Clay based barriers are also used in capping system to seal low-level radioactive wastes precisely. There are several ways by which a CCL can fail but in this study the failure of CCL due to differential settlements is addressed. These differential settlements may happen due to the on-going re-adjustments and biodegradation of heterogeneous waste. In order to understand the deformation behavior of CCL, full scale prototype testing with proper instrumentation is required. However, such type of tests are difficult to perform and many situations, they are next to impossible. In such situations, use of centrifuge modeling concept can help in understanding the behaviour of a smallscale structure subjected to high gravities simulating identical stress-strain behaviour. Hence in this study, differential settlements are simulated in a geocentrifuge and then the behavior of a CCL at the onset of differential settlements is analyzed and presented. EXPERIMENTAL CONCEPT The clay liner forms the most important component of the engineered landfill system. Benson et al. (1999) presented a database of 85 compacted clay liner materials collected from different landfills. From the regressive analysis, it was observed that the soil should possess liquid limit 20 %, plasticity index 7 %, percentage fines 30 and percentage clay fraction 15 % respectively in order to have a hydraulic conductivity 1 10-9 m/s. Various percentages of kaolin-sand mixtures are tried in the present research work in order to match a material type, which are commonly used in actual landfill construction. A blend of kaolin and sand apportioning to 80 % and 20% was found to have liquid limit, plastic limit, shrinkage limit of 38, 22, 20 % respectively. Under static Proctor compaction, its maximum dry unit weight is 15.9 kN/m3 and optimum moisture content is about 22 % respectively.
Since the cracking of a clay liner is highly influenced by the presence of prototype stress conditions, the centrifuge modelling is essential and highly relevant and thus, used in the present research (Viswanadham and Jessberger, 2005). The large beam centrifuge facility available at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) having 4.5 m radius with a capacity of 250 g-ton is used in the present study. A container having internal dimensions of 720 mm in length, 410 mm in height and 450 mm in width was
INTERNATIONAL MEETING, SEPTEMBER 17...>...18, 2007, LILLE, FRANCE CLAYS IN NATURAL & ENGINEERED BARRIERS FOR RADIOACTIVE WASTE CONFINEMENT

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a) Before inducing differential settlements

b) After inducing differential settlements. Figure 1: Schematic representation of model test package. used. A custom designed and specially developed differential settlement simulator was used to induce differential settlements to clay liner during flight at 40 gravities at hydraulic cylinder was custom designed to induce non-uniform settlement of the liner at a rate of about 0.8 mm/min. The moist-compacted clay liner with overburden on top and the sacrificial sand layers at the bottom were supported by air pressure acting inside the hydraulic cylinder at the start of the test, as shown in Fig.1a. Air pressure acting on the oil tank located outside the model test package, which in turn prevented the oil to flow from the hydraulic cylinder into the oil tank. At 40g, the air pressure was released in steps, which in turn decreased the oil pressure supporting the soil mass. This allowed the oil to flow from the hydraulic cylinder to the oil tank under the increased stress of the soil above at 40g level through a flow valve (Fig. 1b). The deformation of the soil is measured using LVDTs placed on the surface of the clay liner. Based on this principle, the model test setup and the procedure of inducing non-uniform settlements to the liner have been arrived at.

RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION To investigate the influence of thickness on the deformation behavior of clay liners, two tests were carried out on clay liner moist-compacted at maximum dry unit weight and optimum moisture content as per standard Proctor compaction. Two thickness of clay liners of 30 mm and 50 mm were considered, which represents clay liners of 1.2 m and 2.0 m thickness in the field at 40 gravities. It was observed that a clay liner with less thickness is subjected to cracking up to full depth unlike a thick liner. However a thick liner was observed to experience wide and shallow cracks. Based on the digital image analysis of markers embedded along the top fibre of clay liner revealed that the thin liner was observed to experience low strains than thick liner. For the tested clay liners, initiation of cracking was observed to take place at strains of the order of 0.65 to 0.9 % only. This implies that for the type of liner material and construction techniques currently being used in the practice, clay based barriers are extremely sensitive to differential settlements and lose their integrity. In the similar direction, an attempt is being made to evaluate the susceptibility of clay based barrier used in capping system for sealing low-level radioactive wastes. References: Benson, C.H, Daniel, D.E, Boutwell, G.P, Field performance of compacted clay liners. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, ASCE. Vol. 125, No. 5, 1999. pp. 390-403. Viswanadham, B.V.S and Jessberger, H.L, Centrifuge Modelling of geosynthetic reinforced clay liners of landfills. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, ASCE. Vol. 131, No.5, 2005. pp. 564-574.
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INTERNATIONAL MEETING, SEPTEMBER 17...>...18, 2007, LILLE, FRANCE CLAYS IN NATURAL & ENGINEERED BARRIERS FOR RADIOACTIVE WASTE CONFINEMENT