Modeling for Design of Landfill Bottom Liners

Abstract

The design of environmentally sound bottom leachate collection systems for solid waste landfills has become a crucial engineering task due to the increased ground‐water contamination from such sites. Analysis of the collection system depends on the formation of a liquid balance equation over and through a relatively impermeable layer. Such a formulation is presented and, subsequently, a simplified version of the mass balance is employed for the realtime simulation of leachate volumes collected over and leaking through the liner. The sensitivity of the computational model is examined and the influence of the problem parameters is assessed. The model satisfactorily predicts head variations over an actual landfill liner. It has practical applications in the selection of optimum geometry and materials for the liner and drainage layer.