In this project, an innovative low hydraulic conductivity material for landfill cover and liner construction was studied. The material is a blend of natural clayey soil from Comodoro Rivadavia city (Chubut province, Argentina) mixed with fine uniform sand and anionic polyacrylamide (APAM). The research emphasizes understanding the influence of APAM addition on the soil water retention capacity (SWRC), unsaturated hydraulic conductivity, and swelling behavior. APAM is a super absorbent polymer that swells when immersed in water. SWRC was evaluated through the filter paper method. The unsaturated hydraulic conductivity and swelling behavior were determined using two fluids: distilled water and brine (C = 2 M). Results showed that APAM addition reduced the blends' microporosity, increased the water retention capacity, and reduced the hydraulic conductivity of the system. These promising results encourage further research on these blends' behavior to determine the most efficient blend formulation to enhance its hydro-mechanical performance and its chemical compatibility with landfill leachates for cover and low hydraulic conductivity liner layer construction.
Mechanical discontinuities are defined as any surface through which some property of the rock mass is not continuous. Usually, the properties of the bulk rock separated by a discontinuity are used to predict the behavior of a formation. However, an analysis of the discontinuities as such is uncommon. The main property of a discontinuity is its shear strength. The shear strength has frictional parameters, such as basic friction angle and roughness, and may have a cohesion parameter. In this work, we evaluated the mechanical properties of artificial mechanical discontinuities. The artificial discontinuities were numerically designed. The mechanical performance of these discontinuities was initially assessed using published failure criteria that depend on the properties of the rock and the discontinuity morphology obtained by visual and 3D image analysis. Finally, triaxial direct shear tests under high confining pressure were performed to validate the criteria and assess their validity under different stress field conditions, properties of rock, and discontinuity morphology.
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