Semi‐analytical solution for the two‐dimensional transport of organic contaminant through geomembrane with strip defects to the underlying soil liner

Abstract

Geosynthetic materials are widely adopted as part of barrier liners in landfills, while the existence of defects in geomembrane (GM) will significantly reduce the barrier efficiency and lead to unexpected pollution in the surrounding environment. In this study, a novel semi-analytical model was proposed to investigate the two-dimensional (2D) migration of organic contaminant through the GM with strip defects to the underlying soil liner (SL). This model has the superiority to consider the concentration condition in the defects, and describe more accurate concentration profiles in the SL. The combination of discretization method and integral transforms were applied to obtain semi-analytical solutions, which were then verified by numerical solutions. Results show that the existence of defects can substantially accelerate the migration process of contaminant through flawed GM to the underlying SL. Specifically, the time interval between migration curves in the model with defects can be 2 or 3 orders of magnitude shorter than that without defects under the same condition.