Behavior of a municipal landfill from field measurement data during a waste-disposal period

The behavior of a municipal waste landfill on marine clay was analyzed from field measurement data. Instruments, e.g., a groundwater level sensor, piezometer, earth pressure gauge, settlement plates, inclinometer, etc., were installed and operated during the disposal period from October 1992 to November 2000. A database system was developed to manage the data from this landfill using Access (Microsoft) with Delphi programs. From the analyses, it was determined that the settlement of the landfill during the initial period of waste disposal was small because of the high leachate level in the landfill. As the level of waste became higher than the leachate level, the settlement of the landfill increased significantly due to the increasing effective pressure within the landfill. From a stability point of view, the critical time for the landfill in this study was the initial period of landfill disposal, which was caused by either the impact load of waste disposal or the time schedule of waste disposal, which was faster than the consolidation of foundation clay caused by the waste load.