The behavior of shear strength property of municipal solid waste (MSW) during decomposition/degradation was presented in this study. The large-scale direct shear laboratory tests were performed for analyzing the variation in shear properties of fresh to decomposed waste. The physical
characteristics, organic content, moisture content at different stages of degradation and increasing age were evaluated for better understanding of the mechanical response. The reduction in the organic fraction from 56% to 16.5% was observed with increase in depth. However, the unit weight
increased with the degradation from 6.97 kN/m3 for fresh to 7.05-10.3 kN/m3 for degraded waste. The results obtained from the direct shear test indicated an increase in the angle of internal friction (φ) whereas cohesion (c) did not follow any pattern with degradation
of waste. It was further observed that the fresh samples of MSW exhibited lower strength than degraded waste. The shear strength of waste was observed to increase with rise in finer fraction thereby also increasing the unit weight and density of the waste. The mobilized cohesion of waste was
observed to vary from 31.9 kPa to 33.4 kPa with an increase in depth till 1.5 m. The results obtained from the tests were compared with the literature and the best fit shear strength parameters for the current study depending upon the degradation of waste was characterized by cohesion value
32.6 kPa and angle of internal friction of 21°.
The aim of the present study is to determine the physical and geotechnical characteristics of municipal solid waste (MSW) from an open dump site located in Una town, Himachal Pradesh (India) for the analysis of settlement and structural stability of landfill. Degraded waste was tested for different time intervals ranging from 6 months to 6 years. The physical characterization and the geotechnical tests were performed to determine the composition and the engineering properties of MSW respectively. The presence of moisture content in the fresh waste was 49.5±1.05% but for the degraded (or old) waste it varied between 39.8 to 51.6%. The specific gravity of fresh and old waste varied between 1.83±0.05 and 1.85 for 6 months old waste and 2.28 for 5-6 years old degraded waste respectively. The maximum dry density (MDD) was observed to be 4.28 kN/m2 for fresh waste at the optimum moisture content (OMC) of 78.1% and 4.47 kN/m3 for 6 months old waste and 6.25 kN/m3 for the degraded waste of 5-6 years at 80.2, 85.4% of OMC respectively. The hydraulic conductivity (k) of MSW was found to be decreasing with the degradation of MSW and the overburden pressure whereas the shear strength increased along with the degradation of the waste. The cohesion (c) and angle of internal friction (φ) increased respectively from 31.2 kPa(fresh) to 38 kPa(degraded) and 14° to 22° with the increase in waste degradation. The compression ratio of fresh waste was within the ranges of 0.19-0.29 and for degraded MSW it varied between 0.12 for 6 months old waste and 0.17 for 5-6 years old degraded waste respectively.
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