Performance comparison of a MSW settlement prediction model in Tehran landfill

© 2019 The municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills experience a large post-closure settlement over time. Waste settlement significantly impairs utilities, structures, and the other facilities constructed on top of a landfill. This study presents the settlement mechanisms and the methods of estimating MSW landfill settlements. Since the waste materials exhibit engineering properties which vary depending on many factors such as the location, time, climate, this study also presents the data related to the landfill characteristics, waste composition, waste moisture content, and other physical and chemical properties of waste. In addition, this paper discusses the findings of a settlement investigation conducted at a municipal solid waste landfill in Tehran. In this research, based on the collected field data and data obtained from the available literature, a technical management tool for MSW closed landfills has been developed using MATLAB, which aims to predict time dependent settlement under self-weight and surcharge loads in landfills considering various related parameters, leachate, gas generation, and moisture distribution, coefficients of compression, whilst it calculates different properties of wastes, and determines the landfill slope stability under various conditions. This user-friendly program captures the variation of the model parameters with time. The results of the verification process indicate that the results from the technical management tool have been in a very good agreement with the measured field settlement data, collected from Tehran landfill. Moreover, the results of sensitivity analysis of the model in regard to variation of input parameters indicate that there are two prominent characteristics, having significant impacts on the overall landfill settlement. These characteristics are the landfill height and the compressibility parameters. The outcomes of this study can improve the confidence for design and construction on MSW landfills. It may reduce the uncertainty when predicting the landfill settlement and enable to apply the landfill redevelopment techniques more effectively and efficiently. Studying the creep settlement properties under the co-effect of stress, biodegradation and temperature for predicting the total landfill settlement is recommended for future studies.