Municipal solid waste effective stress analysis

The mechanical behavior of municipal solid waste (MSW) has attracted the attention of many researchers in the field of geo-environmental engineering in recent years and several aspects of waste mechanical response under loading have been elucidated. However, the mechanical response of MSW materials under undrained conditions has not been described in detail to date. The knowledge of this aspect of the MSW mechanical response is very important in cases involving MSW with high water contents, seismic ground motion and in regions where landfills are built with poor operation conditions. This paper presents the results obtained from 26 large triaxial tests performed both in drained and undrained conditions. The results were analyzed taking into account the waste particles compressibility and the deformation anisotropy of the waste samples. The waste particles compressibility was used to modify the Terzaghi effective stress equation, using the Skempton (1961) proposition. It is shown that the use of the modified effective stress equation led to much more compatible shear strength values when comparing Consolidated-Drained (CD) and Consolidated-Undrained (CU), results, explaining the high shear strength values obtained in CU triaxial tests, even when the pore pressure is almost equal to the confining stress. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.