A general approach to the modelling of contaminant transport through composite landfill liners with intact or leaking geomembranes

Finite‐element models of contaminant transport through composite landfill liners require highly refined meshes around the interface between the geomembrane and the clay layer, especially if leakage through holes in the geomembrane is considered. In addition, no general formulation for transport through leaking geomembranes can be found in the literature. The paper develops a general approach to time‐dependent contaminant migration through composite liners with intact or leaking geomembranes. Equations are derived for various combinations of system conditions including Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions in the waste, constant mass of contaminants in the waste, steady state or transient transport in the geomembrane, and steady state or transient seepage velocities in the mineral liner. The effect of the geomembrane on transport in the soil is converted into an equivalent boundary condition applicable at the top of the clay layer. Hence, only the media underlying the top geomembrane are explicitly represented in the numerical model, yielding a computationally efficient algorithm. The new formulation is validated in conjunction with finite‐layer, finite‐element and boundary‐element methods, by comparing its predictions to those of more conventional approaches which represent the geomembrane explicitly. The scope of the method is illustrated by modelling a landfill liner with a geomembrane leaking in five locations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.