EFFECTS OF PORE PRESSURE ON SLOPE STABILITY OF SANITARY LANDIFLLS

Abstract

This paper, developed by students of thediscipline Sanitary Landfills from the EnvironmentalEngineering Course, shows the effects of pore pressure onthe stability of sanitary landfills by means of numericalsimulation. The cross section of a high volume, 8-year oldstable sanitary landfill was analyzed, considering typicalvalues of strength parameters and specific weight ofBrazilian municipal solid wastes (MSW). The safety factorwas calculated by a numerical code for several assumptionsconcerning pore pressure: a leachate piezometric level inthe landfill, an independent leachate piezometric level ineach construction cell, and pore pressure parameters r uranging from 0.1 to 0.5. Results indicate that a simplifyinghypothesis i.e. pore pressure represented by r u parametersyield safety factors similar to those obtained by morerealistic assumptions. Students studied landfill design,searched for reference parameter values, used a new code,analyzed results and contributed effectively to the design ofMSW landfills.Index Terms ⎯  municipal solid waste, sanitary landfill,stability, pore pressure.