Estimation of Unsaturated Design Parameters for Landfill Alternative Cover Using Electrical Resistivity Method
Publication: Geo-Congress 2022
ABSTRACT
Electrical Resistivity (ER) is a non-destructive geophysical method for geotechnical and geo-environmental investigation. This technique is promising in producing soil moisture map and obtaining subsoil profile information. Additionally, the saturated and unsaturated soil parameters can be evaluated through the electrical resistivity method. The saturated and unsaturated soil properties are critical parameters for earthen infrastructure design, especially the landfill bottom liners and top covers, whereas the soil hydraulic properties play a significant role in the overall performance. On the other hand, Soil water characteristic curve (SWCC) determination is the primary step in the landfill alternative cover design providing values of field capacity (θFC) and wilting point (θWP), water storage capacity, hydraulic conductivity, etc., However, the existing methods for obtaining SWCC have limitations in efficacy. Consequently, the design parameters for landfill top cap may have certain degrees of inadequacies. Thus, this study attempts to use electrical resistivity method as an alternative to determine the essential unsaturated design parameters (θFC and θWP) of landfill alternative cover. In this study, the quantitative relationships between resistivity-moisture content and resistivity-suction were constructed using field data followed by the van Genuchten model. These relationships among the resistivity-suction-moisture content were used to estimate the θFC and θWP. The magnitude of θFC and θWP was found slightly underestimated than the actual design values. However, the methodology developed in this study to estimate the design parameters of landfill cover proved to be a viable alternative method. An analytical approach was also introduced to compute water storage capacity of alternative cover system using resistivity data.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Alam, M. J. B., Hossain, M. S., Sarkar, L., and Rahman, N. (2019, March). Evaluation of Field Scale Unsaturated Soil Behavior of Landfill Cover through Geophysical Testing and Instrumentation. In Geo-Congress 2019: Geoenvironmental Engineering and Sustainability (pp. 1–11). Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers.
Alam, M. J. B., and Hossain, M. S. (2019, March). Evaluation of post-construction changes in soil hydraulic properties through field instrumentation and in situ testing. In Geo-Congress 2019: Geotechnical Materials, Modeling, and Testing (pp. 722–732). Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers.
Alam, M. J. B., Sarker, L., Sapkota, A., Ahmed, R., and Hossain, M. S. (2020, February). Evaluation of Soil Water Storage (SWS) of Evapotranspiration Cover through Geophysical Investigation. In Geo-Congress 2020: Modeling, Geomaterials, and Site Characterization (pp. 444–453). Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers.
Alam, M. J. B. (2020). Moisture content monitoring of evapotranspiration (ET) cover using geophysical testing. In SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts 2020 (pp. 2004–2008). Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
Albright, W. H., Benson, C. H., Gee, G. W., Roesler, A. C., Abichou, T., Apiwantragoon, P., Lyles, B., and Rock, S. A. (2004). “Field water balance of landfill final covers”, Journal of environmental quality, 33(6): 2317–2332.
Albright, W. H., Benson, C. H., and Waugh, W. J. (2010, August). Water balance covers for waste containment: Principles and practice. American Society of Civil Engineers.
Apiwantragoon, P. (2007). Field hydrologic evaluation of final covers for waste containment. Doctoral Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Benson, C. H., and Bareither, C. A. (2012). Designing water balance covers for sustainable waste containment: Transitioning state of the art to state of the practice. In Geotechnical engineering state of the art and practice: Keynote lectures Geocongress 2012 (pp. 1–33).
Castellini, M., Di Prima, S., and Iovino, M. (2018). “An assessment of the BEST procedure to estimate the soil water retention curve: A comparison with the evaporation method.” Geoderma 320 (May): 82–94.
Durmusoglu, E., Corapcioglu, M. Y., and Tuncay, K. (2006). “Modeling of settlement in saturated and unsaturated municipal landfills.” Int. J. Geomech., 6(4), 269–278.
Ebrahim-Zadeh, G., Bayat, H., Sinegani, A. A. S., Abyaneh, H. Z., and Vereecken, H. (2017). “Investigating the correlation between soil tensile strength curve and soil water retention curve via modeling.” Soil Tillage Res. 167 (Apr): 9–29.
Fredlund, D. G., and Xing, A. (1994). “Equations for the soil-water characteristic curve.” Can. Geotech. J., 31(4), 521–532.
Haverkamp, R., Debionne, S., Angulo-Jaramillo, R., and de Condappa, D. (2016). “Soil properties and moisture movement in the unsaturated zone.” In The handbook of groundwater engineering, 167–208. 3rd ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Klute, A. (1986). “Water retention: Laboratory methods.” In Methods of soil analysis: Part 1-Physical and mineralogical methods, (methodsofsoilan1), 635–662. Madison, WI: American Society of Agronomy.
Khire, M. V. (2016). Geoclimatic Design of Water Balance Covers for Municipal Solid Waste Landfills in Texas., Lone Star Chapter of the Solid Waste Association of North America, Aug. p. 333.
Liang, R. Y., Rababah, S., and Khasawneh, M. (2008). “Predicting moisture-dependent resilient modulus of cohesive soils using soil suction concept.” J. Transp. Eng., 134(1), 34–40.
Oberg, A. L. (1995). “Negative pore pressures-seasonal variation and importance in slope stability analysis.” Proc., 1st Int. Conf. on Unsaturated Soils, Paris, 2 907–913.
Rahardjo, H., Chang, M. F., and Lim, T. T. (1995). “Shear strength and in situ matric suction of a residual soil.” Proc., 1st Int. Conf. on Unsaturated Soils, Paris, 2, 637–643.
Rasul, H., Zou, L., and Olofsson, B. (2018). “Monitoring of moisture and salinity content in an operational road structure by electrical resistivity tomography.” Near Surf. Geophys. 16 (4): 423–444.
Thakur, V. K., Sreedeep, S., and Singh, D. N. (2005). “Parameters affecting soil–water characteristic curves of fine-grained soils.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 131 (4): 521–524.
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. (2017). “Guidance for Requesting a Water Balance (WB) Alternative Final Cover for a Municipal Solid Waste Landfill.”.
Van Dam, R. L., Wood, W. W., Hyndman, D. W., Eustice, B. P., and Simmons, C. T. (2017). “Electrical resistivity tomography to image convective flow in groundwater: Examples from the United Arab Emirates Sabkha.” In Proc., Int. Conf. on Engineering Geophysics, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, 358–361. Tulsa, OK: Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
Wilson, G. W., Fredlund, D. G., and Barbour, S. L. (1997). “The effect of soil suction on evaporative fluxes from soil surfaces.” Can. Geotech. J., 34, 145–155.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
History
Published online: Mar 17, 2022
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.